Paying taxes, registering a car (did anyone else realise you need to have something called CTP insurance in order to register your vehicle?), making a dental appointment …
These very practical and necessary skills fall under the banner of “adulting” – a term coined by millennials, for millennials. And there are now courses where individuals like me – who might be able to book an Airbnb and stream the latest episode of Black Mirror, but have extreme difficulty opening a bank account – can learn how to ‘adult’ more effectively.
The Adulting School is one of these institutions. It opened in Portland, Maine, in the US this February and is run by therapist Rachel Weinstein and former public-school teacher Katie Brunelle. There are similar schools run by East Carolina University and MassMutual. It seems like only a matter of time before the same courses are offered in Australia.
According to The Adulting School website, the day-long courses, which cost $30 per person, are for people suffering from the following affliction:
If you’re feeling like you’re pretending to be a grown-up and that someone’s going to realise you don’t know the sh%#t you’re supposed to know.
Course subjects include organising your calendar, saving money, making dental appointments. The list goes on and there is no talk about Instagram filters or hooking up on Tinder.
As much as we might laugh, and my dad would definitely roll his eyes, at schools for adulting, there are so many instances where I wish I had of been to one. For example:
Receiving a $650 dollar fine for driving an unregistered vehicle... Ummm, how are you meant to know it's unregistered without the sticker on the windshield?
Trying to change the address on my driver's license. I put this off for months because I thought it was going to be a massive debacle. Turns out you just have to calls Roads and Maritime Services and a lovely woman at the end of the phone called Brenda will post you a sticker to go on the back of your existing licence.
Disconnecting the electricity from the apartment I was moving out of. (If you're not good at adulting, you really should not move apartments. I learned this the hard way.)
Listen: On Mamamia Out Loud, Mia Freedman says Millennials need to stop hiding behind degrees and get a job. Post continues below.
Applying for a personal loan or a car loan. Banks ask so many questions. I walked out of the air-conditioning feeling as big as a caterpillar, and completely terrified about being locked into a four-year repayment plan. (My generation are no good at feeling locked into anything. Too. Much. Pressure.)
I did win at adulting and went to the dentist last week. (It was the first time I've gone in four years, but that's not important). He told me I have teeth of "above average" condition, which made me feel great at adulting and the flossing involved. BUT he also told me I need two fillings. I panicked and left without booking another appointment.
Anything to do with taxes. Anything at all. I studied mathematic optimisation and long division in high school. But I don't know about taxes and I can't figure out percentages without a calculator.
Interestingly, you can test your "adulting IQ" on The Adulting School's website. (But actually partaking in the quiz seems like too much adulting for me, and I already know I'm going to fail.)
Maybe that's why the one-day course offers free "boutique" booze, a Japanesse food truck for lunch and peanut butter frosted cupcakes for snacking.
Adulting needs to be learned in small, tasty, steps. If it wasn't for the free food and booze, why on earth would we care?
Top Comments
Oh, man! This mess is on us. It’s ours. We even paid for it. And now it’s in a sick, never-ending loop that doesn’t much change from day to day.
All that media babble, the college idiocy, that politically-correct absurdity … all of that nauseating dysfunction … it’s on us. Condoned by our silence and financed by our sacrifices
And now ... now it’s hard to imagine a cure.
It started not-so-long ago in an epidemic of self-esteem. Followed by a torrent of calligraphied certificates for simply standing around. Spit out in such a frenzy that folks ran out of refrigerator space.
Then we stopped keeping score … and soon every kid got a trophy … even the last place kids … who all knew they were losers, but made to feel perfectly special about it. Tailpipes were never so full of smoke.
We outlawed letter grades and substituted stupid-speak that said nothing offensive and revealed nothing. So blunt-speak became archaic and reality more elusive.
And all along the way, the schools pounded parents into puzzling parenting.
A swat on the bottom became child-abuse, water pistols a cause for suspension … and a ticket to the shrink. The line between boys and girls got real fuzzy-blurry. Playground games like tag were declared too touchy ... and the monkey bars too masculine. Dodge-ball gone! And Boy Scouts had to accept girls … and so now girls have boys in their locker-rooms. Fair's fair. Or is it?
And no one saw this coming? C'mon.
Then helicopter moms swooped in and groomed every speed-bump into a landing-strip of foam … choking off maturity by hand-feeding life to kids who grew into faux-adults who couldn’t deal with a contrary opinion, a rough word, or an election in which they didn’t even vote.
Few escaped the madness. And as the kids got older, it got worse.
Every dating misstep became a felony. Affirmative action for minorities gave way to white people with bad privileges. Segregation somehow became cool again. Changing your sex became a fashionable neurosis.
College kids could major in anything their hearts desired … and then rage about the lack of jobs because they had an expensive degree in Musical Anesthesiology, Applied Vegan Hydroponics, or Feminology and the Male Myth.
Middle class Americans … that’s some of you! … paid a politically-correct extortion tax disguised as college tuition so your kids could have a brighter future … if they could escape the clutches of warped, out-of-control Sixties’ retreads … and their faculty disciples … who think colleges are finishing schools for the next generation of tie-dyed bullshit artists who know nothing and never shut up.
Everything is upside down.
A whole generation …or more! … insists that life has never been this unfair. Not ever.
And they claim unalienable rights to free tuition and jobs that pay well … but don’t take up too much time. There’s apparently a fundamental right to free medical insurance, extended vacations, comfortable living situations, and a worry-free world. I didn’t know that.
They insist that America should open its borders and play James Taylor songs for those misunderstood medievalists who lop off heads and execute babies.
They believe America’s the root of all evil … the planetary criminals whose greed grew deserts, melted glaciers, and almost killed off Charlie Tuna.
America’s bad … and that’s that!
And so … there they are. On full display. Crying in safe spaces and skipping mid-terms. Calling for a do-over election. Blaming the Russians or Wikipedia or fake news.
This mess is on us. We let this crap go on for too long. Now we're knee-deep in it.
There's a lesson to be learned. Learn it.
Denis Ian
The girl in the middle of that video conversation is literally advocating for cities outside of Sydney to become like Sydney. What she's recommending is literally WHY none of us can afford to buy in Sydney. I don't want to see that happen to the entire country... Investing in houses should be illegal for a while, buy a house and live in it and sell it when you no longer want to live in it. That will help the housing bubble.