Carly Liao on coming of age

This is not an advice column. To those anxiously perusing these pages hoping for a few pearls of wisdom from an all-knowing Oracle senior, you won’t find them here. (Might I recommend the personal column written by the eminent Michael Zhang instead?)

Frankly, I am entirely unqualified to give advice to anyone else, which is why I’ll opt to do what I do best: talk about myself.

I’ve always held a great love for coming-of-age an advice column. As I find myself in the middle of my own coming-of-age story, I’ve found that the reality of growing older cannot be reduced to a few inspirational sound bites. Growing up, for me, looks like celebrating my driver’s license, working at a job I disliked and crying at Night Rally during homecoming week. It also largely consists of scrolling through Instagram in my room when I have nothing better to do—or when I do and simply don’t feel like doing it. Growing up does not end in a flurry of graduation caps, an impulsive dive into the pool or a wild ride down the highway. Growing up takes a long time—I’ve heard rumors that it sometimes lasts an entire lifetime.

I’m sure if someone chose to make a film out of my life, it would be a terrible coming-of-age movie. There is no overall life lesson—or there are too many, and I have chosen to ignore all of them as I stumble along and make the same mistakes over and over again. I’ve gotten lucky when I didn’t deserve it and hurt other people who deserved better. The plot would be all tangled and messy and ultimately unsatisfying.

Nonetheless, I regret absolutely none of it. I am not here to live out a fantasy of growing up, to take trite life lessons to heart and run into problems that neatly resolve themselves. I am happy to simply live my own life—embrace it, run headlong into it or however it is I end up living it. I’m aware it makes me a horrible advice giver, but I’m a much more real, joyful person for it.

If we were to take a line from any one piece of media as honest gospel for the maturing adolescent, it would be this: “I’m only seventeen; I don’t know anything.” I doubt I ever will, but I’ll have a marvelous time trying to learn.