When I was eighteen and a freshman in college, I had a roommate who would call home to ask his mother if the food in his fridge had gone bad. I did laundry for the first time, as I had just moved away from home. We both turned into self-sufficient adults, but there was a learning curve to doing so; it didn't happen overnight on our eighteenth birthdays. Now, when I teach students of the same age, they send me emails all the time along the lines of "Am I doing this assignment right?" and seek affirmation and other kinds of hand-holding because the freedoms of college and adulthood are a lot to take in all at once. My colleague reminded me of something telling: their prom was three months ago. I don't know how relevant this all is to the topic at hand, or even where I stand on it, but I'm glad I didn't make any decisions that would be costly to my career, digitally archived forever, or call my integrity (for lack of a better word) into question at an age when I was still being carded to buy certain video games.
When I was 18 I was almost on the Ricki Lake Show. My parent begged me not to do it but it took disapproval from my grandparents to talk me out if it. My roommate and I were going to be on to talk about living with someone with a drug problem. We concocted a story where she smoked too much pot and I was upset about it. While I slept, she would blow it in my ear to get me high. -all BS, but the show really wanted us. We just wanted a free trip and hotel stay. At 18 that's all it took for me to embarrass myself on national TV. Thank GOD I didn't do it.