Sophie's column: I'm not so sure I'm ready to take on the world, just yet!

I feel like people my age are at a particularly strange point in their lives right now. When I was younger, I never thought that being 20 would be so significant.

I had it in my head that my friends and I would stay in Falkirk for the rest of our lives, we’d all go to university and secure jobs relatively quickly afterwards and we’d be settled down by the time we were 24 or 25.

What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was being so very close to that scenario at the age of just 20.

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This shock has come around mostly after what happened at the weekend.

On Saturday own of my closest friends moved from Shieldhill to Newcastle into her own little flat after securing a graduate job in a hospital down south.

Suzie graduated with a mental health nursing degree shortly after turning 21 and now lives in a flat with strangers, is doing a grown-up job and has to worry about her own washing and cooking every night.

21 all of a sudden seems a lot closer to 24 than I initially thought and, what’s more, 21 is only a short seven month wait away for me.

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I think another big contributing factor to this shock is everything I’ve been seeing on social media.

I always thought people at my stage of life wouldn’t think about having kids or getting married.

Perhaps it’s the way I’ve been brought up or just sheer naivety, but the idea of having a huge responsibility like a child or a wedding is something I know I wouldn’t be able to take on at 20.

I’ve prided myself on being someone who thought they were mature and ready to take on the world when the time came but, all of a sudden, I’m not so sure.

Realising that, actually, there’s so many people I know beginning the rest of their lives right now is pretty daunting.

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