The expression ‘they grow up too fast’ is an adage uttered by parents, grandparents, teachers and basically anyone who has ever witnessed firsthand someone transitioning from childhood to any other stage in their lives. You yourself probably feel that a year flies by (although time always manages to slow down in class).

On the whole, though, I beg to differ from this popular opinion. From what I can see, my graduate and graduating friends have more similarities with little children than accomplished adults. It seems nothing we’ve learned in the last four years has prepared anyone enough to survive the next 10.

There are some superficial signs of impending adulthood, such as drinking wine out of bottles instead of boxes or beginning to actually check your credit reports. If you’re like me, you may also begin to get a panicky feeling when you think hard about where you will be after spring semester. I suppose a real adult would develop an ulcer.

The main sign that kids aren’t growing up fast enough (if at all) can be seen in their residences. According to a recent census, about 42 percent of college students say they plan to move back home upon graduation. About eight out of 10 friends of mine who graduated moved back in with their parents. While it might make financial sense, the type of independence college is supposed to instill would seem to make living with your parents positively intolerable.

College is supposed to be the intermediary stage between childhood, associated with dependence, and adulthood, which is supposedly connected with self-sufficiency. When you move back home, or even back into a dorm to pursue another degree, you effectively drag out the process by banking on ‘real’ adults to provide comfort in the form of meals, housekeeping, even financial aid. I know graduating seniors whose credit cards are all still cosigned by their folks.

Most graduating seniors I know are far from emotionally ready for the challenges of life after college, which may be why they seek the assistance of family. They cannot cope with the emotional commitments involved in the possible future: getting married, settling into a job, just committing to being yourself for the next 50 to 60 years. There’s now a popular term that defines the kind of fear and panic that graduating students have: quarter-life crises. Only we can’t afford sports cars.

I don’t specifically blame college for failing to prepare students adequately for real life; I do blame society for not caring. It seems unfair that the level of stress we are expected to cope with in 2007 would have been enough to qualify as a mental breakdown for a 20-year-old in 1955. Time flying by is not the problem; it’s that the time passing has been useless in correlation with the time still ahead.

Class has prepared me for my specific field, but I am not na√ÉØve enough to think all graduates go into the field in which they majored. Would a required class in filing taxes, adult etiquette, credit management or even a crash course in serious relationships go astray? It seems young adulthood is becoming negatively defined by what we don’t know and don’t feel rather than what we do.