Here I go!

This summer, I spent six weeks living and working at a academic camp for teenagers. Students with this program have a very regimented schedule and a strict "lights out" at 10:30 p.m.

One afternoon at the end of camp, a student turned to me and asked, "Maggie, what time is your lights out?"

I giggled. "I'm twenty-five," I replied. "I'm a grown up. No one tells me when to go to bed but me."

My student was impressed. My twelve-year-old self did a fist-pump. There are some really cool aspects of being a grown up, like staying up until one in the morning watching old episodes of The Office, deciding what you want to make yourself for dinner, and wearing high heels to work.

Oh yeah, it's a real cool hood.

In all honesty, though, I don't have much experience with this so-called grown up state. Like many of my generation, I have had a protracted adolescence. A liberal arts degree and bad economy meant that I moved straight back home after college (college, by the way, is not a place where anyone acts like a grown up). I worked for two years on a master's degree while living with my parents. Now, after a harrowing job search, I finally am able to move into my first apartment and start that process of becoming a grown up.

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This blog will document all these grown up activities such as cooking, shopping, dressing for work, furnishing and decorating my apartment, paying bills, paying (ohgodsomany) student loans, and so many other things that I will encounter along the way. Within this blog, I will also examine the concept of being an adult. I am not necessarily a babe in arms about these things but moving out on my own, starting a new job, and going to the next stage in my life will certainly put my previous skills to the test and demand that I form new adult behaviors.

It all sounds so serious, but I actually am very excited. I firmly believe that growing up is a good thing (take that Peter Pan!). So many cool and exciting things are about to happen! I can't wait to experience growing up and share my story with you.