Is adult life scary?

My response to an anonymous question

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

(Almost) every summer I run a week long program for teenagers based on social entrepreneurship and leadership. At the end of the week, I let kids ask three things:

1. Anything about anything
2. Anything about me
3. Anything about someone else in the group they didn’t want to ask.

Why? Because five years ago I said they could decide what we did for 30 minutes, and they voted to bombard me with any question they wanted to write down, and I couldn’t get angry at the questions, but I didn’t have to answer ones I didn’t want to. Some of those questions will not be answered on Medium.

So I refined the process a bit, to the list above. The question in the title was one of the questions posed in category 1, and at the time I gave a response. Now I’ve had time to think a bit more, here is what I would have said. A very similar answer, but with a bit more context and substance.

What would your response be?

What actually is an adult in your mind?

First off, the difference between a legal adult and an actual one, in terms of being responsible and self-sufficient, are two extremely different things. At 18 I had literally just finished…