I’m 21 years old in my senior year of college. If everything goes according to my rough plans, I’ll be a college graduate and be starting a career in the next nine months or so. I’m old enough to drive, gamble, drink, own a handgun, and enlist in the military. By all accounts, it appears that I am on the cusp of true and absolute adulthood. What could be more “grown up” than moving into a non-collegiate apartment and paying taxes as an independent? For fuck’s sake, I wore a jacket and tie all day yesterday without even really thinking about it. (I was going to a job fair, but still. It didn’t seem weird.)

All that aside, why don’t I feel like an adult?

I mean, I don’t have a career, but I work in an office. Earlier today, I was stuck in a two hour meeting discussing the methodical implications of determining the fiscal impact of various cost-sharing premiums in Maryland’s eligible Medicaid enrollees. And those aren’t just words I made up. How crazy is that?! And yet still, I don’t feel like an adult.

I guess if I need to break it down into simple terms, I think I might not feel like an adult because I don’t dress like one. Yesterday aside, my attire tends to be polo shirts with jeans and a baseball cap. I work in an office, but they still view me as an undergrad, so I look and dress and act like an undergrad. I’d like to change my wardrobe, but the wages of a part-time research assistant paying off a car loan don’t exactly facilitate new clothes shopping.

Also, I don’t own a suit that fits. When I want to go somewhere nice (or friggin’ job related), I have to pair up my $50 blazer with cheap button-ups and khakis.

When it comes down to it, I feel like I’m trapped between two extremes. There are the casual clothes of college students and the stringent business casual clothes of the middle aged, and I don’t know where I need to look to find good middle ground. How the hell is a respectable 20-something supposed to dress?