Costume: Optional. Must look smart all the time.

Rules to playing grown up:

1) Must have a job.

2) Must be in touch with people who actually have jobs of their own.

3) Must stop talking about Britney Spears, High School Musical and your huge crush on Chris Evans.

4) Must start paying for your own bills.

5) Must learn to budget.

6) Must carry around a “jam packed” planner.

7) Must refrain from giggling and cheering too loudly at basketball games. Must act “refined” all the time. It doesn’t matter if cheering at basketball games is the number one thing you love to do.

8) Must spend weekends with friends: stressful week must equate to a very fun weekend which is the only time you “unwind”. Translation of fun weekend: bars. Clubs. Parties. Boys. Drinks. Not: staying at home all weekend watching DVDS until your eyes pop, rereading Nicholas Sparks novels and drinking multiple cups of coffee.

9) Must get over that girlish high school crush which forces you to turn red and become incoherent whenever around the same crush. Grown up girls do not show a trace of emotion around the person that they admire.

10) Must always smile, must always maintain good posture and must only laugh at appropriate times.

11) When you’re grown up, “just friends” is a silly phrase. That hardly ever happens or people just don’t accept that a guy and a girl can be just friends.

Four months into the grown up life and I haven’t gotten the list quite right. I don’t think there’s a surefire way to living the grown up life. All I know is that the rules given above don’t apply to me at all. I still haven’t figured out how to act like a grown up and still haven’t gotten over my very own peter pan complex.