Sitting cross-legged on your couch from Facebook Marketplace, you ease back into the comfort of the dilapidated fabric and close your eyes in meditative indulgence. The room retains the lingering scent of last night’s microwaveable dinner from Trader Joes, abandoned cups are spread in disarray and your clothes are everywhere but the closet.

But you don’t mind, because it’s all yours. 

Growing up, we hazily attempt to envision a future version of ourselves, prompting us to speculate the incomprehensible. ‘What might we look like?’, ‘What will we be known for?’ and ‘Will I be proud of my future self?’ are questions that elicit no good answers — only hopeful predictions.

The primary commonality among these personally-tailored prophecies is the predestined want for independence. From the moment we are brought into the world, we are guided — whether through hardship or tender guidance from a mentor — how to function as an individual within it. Be it financial or geographical, independence has become synonymous with adulthood, as a necessary step in realizing one’s full sense of self.

So, looking beyond the crumb-ridden floors and the graveyard of neglected house plants, we’d say our six-year-old selves would be pretty satisfied with us just for living away from home — in whatever conditions that may be. 

The college experience signifies a shift from adolescence to adulthood, with undergraduates typically ranging in age from 17-22 years old. Ultimately, the goal of an institution like Chapman is to prepare its students for careers in their field of study. In internalizing that mindset, it’s easy to forget that we, as students, are still actively living through a developmental period of our lives — both in the context of our learning and literally, as studies find that most people don’t reach full maturity in the brain until the age of 25.

Transitioning into adulthood in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic certainly didn’t make things any easier, as students across the globe (our staff included) can attest. Independence became a double-edged sword for students combating illness miles away from home and a source of anxiety for some students who had grown re-accustomed to the comfort of their hometowns throughout Chapman’s last year of remote learning. 

Others, in adapting to the circumstances at the onset of the pandemic, were forced to mature rapidly in order to fend for their health. Foregoing one’s attendance at a fraternity party in the middle of a global health crisis would seem like the obvious choice to curb COVID-19 transmission — but the making of this decision required a level of maturity to be willing to sacrifice the individual desire to have a traditional college experience for the common good. 

And we sure as hell don’t agree with it, but we understand why so many people were unwilling to make that sacrifice — they wanted to hold on to some fragment of carefree youth — just at an extremely reckless cost.

Now that we’re back in-person and COVID-19 protocols have lessened on a county, state and national level, it is important to retain our mental growth from the last year and a half, but equally as important to rekindle a relationship with one’s inner child. Too often, we drift out of touch with our individualized, base wants and needs — the aspirations that your six-year-old self would have wanted you to go after.

Continuing to feed this inner child, through time and energy allocated toward oneself, is critical in maintaining a sense of emotional stability while navigating one’s entry into adulthood. Although the capacity in which an individual should spend this time and energy is completely personalized and subjective, we recommend starting by creating small windows throughout the week to indulge in a hobby you’re passionate about (but can never seem to find the time for).

The manner in which we speak to ourselves should also mimic how we would talk to our younger selves — with compassion and empathy. By uttering positive affirmations, we can more easily get in touch with our inner selves, which is an amalgamation of our emotions and experiences from past to present.

Amid a pandemic that has forced us to mature at an expedited rate, it is of increasing importance that we do not lose sight of the passions, the fears, the desires and the optimism that characterized our younger years. Embracing one’s inner child will be the key to navigating the remainder of college in an ever-shifting environment.