Graduation and Growing up - Editorial From Chris McCahill

I graduated last week, and sure, we made all the cliché jokes about being older, no idea what we’ll do now etc. We were given a talk about ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and were told that maybe we should jump down the rabbit hole before thinking of how we’ll get out again, or that maybe we should drink that potion; it may make us bigger, but does that mean we’ve grown up? We were encouraged to be more spontaneous and to go out & play the game that is life now that we’d grown up - but had we really grown up?! I didn’t really think so.  It was when I got home later that evening, I realised that little had changed from that day: I’m still in college, I would still be getting up early the next morning for class, but more than that, I hadn’t changed.It made me think about growing up and whether we actually ever do or not. For myself I don’t think we do grow up, at least not in that metaphorical sense. Sure, as we get older we develop physically, mentally, with a better idea of who we are as a person, but can we ever pinpoint that moment when we actually do “Grow Up.” Before I would’ve picked out days such as my graduation as the day when I would have said “I have now grown up” but the reality is I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow up; I’m probably too immature in the first place to ever really grow up as others might see it. Overall, the one lesson I’ll take away from my graduation is that idea of jumping down the rabbit hole without thinking of how I’ll get out... we only live once, so why not be that bit more spontaneous?