Sleepovers at Grandma\u2019s house were the best. I got to eat unlimited Ferrero Rocher chocolates, watch Disney movies on VHS and listen to her stories before bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one of her guest bedrooms, which was my mother\u2019s childhood room, she kept a toddler bed for me. It was low to the floor with princess bedding, and I loved it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I climbed upstairs, my grandma looked at me and laughed softly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat bed is too small for you now,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can sleep in a big-girl bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
An upgrade. My grandmother beamed, proud of this small rite of passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I should\u2019ve been ecstatic \u2014 more room to roll around, extra pillows and the bragging rights of sleeping in the \u201cbig-girl bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Except I wasn\u2019t. That night, I cried myself to sleep. My cousin came into the room and asked what was wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to grow up,\u201d I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For as long as I can remember, the idea of growing up has filled me with dread.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Of course, I wanted the perks: driving, going to the mall without my parents and feeling independent. It wasn\u2019t the responsibilities that scared me, but the idea of having to mourn who I once was.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nostalgia, for me, was never sweet \u2014 it was suffocating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That feeling followed me through different milestones: birthdays, high school graduation and moving into my college dorm. Each transition carried the same bittersweet weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The day before moving into college, my best friend and I talked about how we couldn\u2019t fathom the fact that our days of driving to school together every morning and going to basketball practice after school would soon end.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And when I moved into college, it hit me that I could no longer knock on my sister\u2019s bedroom door just to talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Change meant letting go of a version of myself and a life I\u2019d known.<\/p>\n
The music and media I loved echoed that fear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My dad, a huge Pink Floyd fan, often played \u201cTime,\u201d which starts with an ominous clock ticking. The song is bleak and a painfully honest reflection of how quickly life slips by.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, of course, the Swiftie in me clings to Taylor Swift\u2019s song \u201cNothing New,\u201d where she mourns the fading of youth and the way society treats women as if they have expiration dates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat will become of me once I\u2019ve lost my novelty?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder so many of us equate aging with loss. We\u2019re told college is the best time of our lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So does that mean that it\u2019s all downhill after graduation?\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a senior, I find myself reflecting on who I was when I first walked onto this campus and who I\u2019ll be as I walk away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This ending is bigger than just college. It\u2019s the end of my identity as a student and the time before adulthood sets in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet this time, I\u2019m not as afraid. Aging, I\u2019ve realized, is a privilege, not a punishment. Each year has given me more knowledge, experience and lessons that have shaped me into a dynamic version of myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In college, I\u2019ve learned so much about who I am. I\u2019ve run two half marathons after never running in high school. I found confidence in public speaking and classroom presentations, something I\u2019ve never been comfortable with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I discovered a love for journalism, even though the thought of interviewing a stranger once terrified me. I studied abroad in Spain for a semester, even though the idea of being in another country without my family would have been unimaginable to my younger self.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These versions of me wouldn\u2019t exist if time and experiences hadn\u2019t accumulated.<\/p>\n
Maybe society calls youth our \u201cgolden years\u201d because it\u2019s when the future still feels wide open \u2014 when nothing is set in stone and our identities feel flexible. But our character and successes aren\u2019t finite by a certain age.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While we can\u2019t control the romanticization of youth, we don\u2019t have to accept that narrative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting older means we\u2019ve read more books, met more friends and lived more of our most cherished moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This version of me has met lifelong friends, traveled to new places, started new hobbies and is the most educated version of myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The truth is, if time didn\u2019t move forward, neither would I.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m sad that my chapter at Lehigh is drawing to a close, I\u2019m also grateful. Aging doesn\u2019t mean all the good days have passed when there\u2019s still opportunities ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My future still feels unknown, but perhaps that\u2019s the most exciting part.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So yes, I\u2019m excited to grow up.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sleepovers at Grandma\u2019s house were the best. I got to eat unlimited Ferrero Rocher chocolates, watch Disney movies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,4520,1198],"class_list":{"0":"post-27553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-4-min-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-edit-desk","13":"tag-student-and-campus-life"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}