"Fake adulting" is a behavior commonly exhibited by students in their final years of college or closely following graduation. The practice involves working and/or interning in a setting where a student is required to wear real pants (see: not leggings) and interact with actual adults on a regular basis. Despite the frequent breakdowns that may occur due to stress and lack of sleep, fake adulting can actually be beneficial and teach you a number of things.
1. It's Okay to Say No
Being a fake adult in a sea of real adults can be overwhelming and cause a lot of pressure. You feel like you have to say "yes" whenever someone asks for a favor because, well, they're making about 700% as much as you are. You're constantly asking if anyone needs help or offering to buy coffee for the office, just to make sure they remember you exist (and maybe for some sweet letters of recommendation). However, after you've been playing the fake adult game in the same place for long enough, you realize that you don't need to do everything to prove that you're not a waste of their money. You realize that you were hired to do your own work and nobody will hate you if you don't sit around and staple their pamphlets for four hours instead of doing it.
2. You Don't Know Everything (And You Don't Need To)
When you're in college, your opinions are everything. You're always being asked to engage in discussions (also known as arguments with the one guy in your class who thinks that global warming isn't real) and to defend your point of view. With all of this, it's not hard to see why college kids think they know it all. Fake adulting is a great way to get a reality check. It's almost impossible not to realize that you don't know everything when you are, quite literally, the person in the office who knows the least. But hopefully, you're also surrounded by professionals who are more than okay with answering all of your dumb questions. By the end of your time there, you'll have learned that nobody expects you to have all of the answers and how to change the toner in a printer!
3. Real Adults are Faking It Just as Much as You
This is easily the most important thing you'll learn from being a fake adult. If you play your cards right, you're going to become close with the real adults you're working with. You're going to be able to come to them and cry on their office floor because you don't have your life together. They're going to tell you that it's okay, they don't have their lives together either, so on and so forth. This is really hard to believe when they can usually answer any question you have and never spill coffee on their white shirts. But one day, one fateful day, you'll see them swamped with work and breaking down. When this happens, you're going to feel relieved and that doesn't make you a bad person. It's a really comforting thing to know that the people who hired you, that are making real money and have been adulting for far longer, don't really know everything; sometimes, they're just as confused as you are.
Long story short, fake adulting is going to make you feel even more like a mess than you probably already did. But at the end of the day, you're gaining a ton of experience, making great relationships, learning a lot about yourself, and you know what? Being a real adult is overrated anyways.
