Since we last spoke, I celebrated a birthday. Many people will laugh at the fact I was anxious about turning 19, but in all honesty, the idea filled me with absolute dread. I think there was something disheartening about it being my last year of being a teenager. When I turned 18, there was so much to be excited about. I could drink (legally). I could gamble. I could buy cigarettes. Sure, half of these were things I never had any desire to do, but it was exciting. I was an adult.

I’ve been an adult for a whole year now. When I was younger, I thought that once I was an adult, everything would make sense – I thought that ‘grown ups’ knew it all. I was wrong. Sometimes I feel like everyone else has read some book that tells you how to be an adult, or maybe there was a class I missed because I was too busy watching repeats of Doctor Who. Perhaps I could pretend to be a proper adult because I lived away from home at university, but living off of pizza and ready meals hardly equips me for life’s big challenges. I still don’t understand mortgages. I couldn’t tell you the slightest thing about the stock exchange. And when the hell am I going to start enjoying gardening?

I think I’m starting to understand why I dreaded it so much now though. I felt like I should have achieved something by now, or I should know a whole lot about the world. The media is filled with stories about these 13-year-old geniuses and Grammy/Oscar/Tony/Nobel Peace Prize/World’s Greatest Person Ever Award winning 17-year-olds, and I couldn’t help but feel that I should have done something amazing by now. In a world that’s getting older, why is there so much pressure on young people? I think for now, I need to sit back and relax, and enjoy being young. I’ve got a degree to finish, and then hopefully the world will be my oyster.

A few years from now, maybe I’ll have my head screwed on a little tighter, and I can head out into the big wide world and do scary grown up things like worry about credit ratings. For now though, it’s time to hold on to nineteen, and squeeze out a few more of those sulky teenage tantrums while I can.