Oh My God! My Life's Right Out of a Teen Magazine!

I was too bossy, wouldn't take naps and already knew how to tie my shoes. So, after two weeks of kindergarten, I was kicked out and enrolled in first grade. I didn't lose my last baby tooth until my sophomore year of high school and couldn't drive until senior spring. My friends had to buy my tickets to rated 'R' movies. This is the first year that I can legally buy cigarettes and I will most likely celebrate my anticlimactic twenty-first birthday in law school, pretending that I'm 23.

In other words, it was not by my own volition nor by any genius a la Doogie Howser that I spent all four years of high school and will spend all but one semester of college as a teenager. But does being a "teen" really make a difference? Actually, I often feel stuck in re-runs of "My So-Called Life" or maybe just some cheesy after-school special. Regardless of my efforts to the contrary, I seem to face some sort of weekly teen angst crisis: parents' relationship on ice, friend with eating disorder or pregnancy scare, peer pressure, psycho boyfriend; an untimely pimple.

Other quintessential teen experiences include stressful episodes related to cheerleading tryouts and the time I was busted for having a party while my parents were out of town. Lest I forget, I also met my teen idol, Leonardo DiCaprio and was so giggly when he agreed to a photo that I bumbled embarrassingly as I tried to extract my camera from its case.

But being young has its advantages, too. Sometimes people say that I remind them of the 16-year-old heroines of "Clueless" or "Dirty Dancing," and this Halloween, my roommates didn't think much of encouraging me to dress up as Baby Spice. With the new release of "Lolita," Hollywood seems to think nymphets are back en vogue as well. It must be true given my knack for attracting older guys who find some disturbingly kinky pleasure in the fact that I don't remember, for example, Michael Jackson pre-surgery.

On the other hand, it is unnerving that I can't quite determine whether it's my own immaturity or whether Harvard is a four-year, sleep-away-camp mixer. Being "boy crazy" and "cliquey" and getting a thrill from under age drinking hasn't exactly faded into the past. At parties, girls still stand in the corner to whisper ("That style is, like, so five minutes ago!") and gossip about recent hook-ups ("Those two together? As if!"). Boys demonstrate their ever-raging hormones by "grinding" with each other on the dance floor, chugging beer.

Sometimes I pass notes in class. And every once in a while there's a mashed potato and M&M food fight in the dining hall. I still get "psyched" to be asked to dances by guys who are shorter than I am and I constantly punctuate my sentences with "whatever!" Discontent over bra size is an all-too-frequent topic of discussion among my girlfriends. The mall is one of my favorite escapes. The last movie I saw was Adam Sandler's Waterboy, an adolescent masterpiece. Madonna's "Immaculate Collection" resides permanently in my Walkman. The lives and hairstyles of Dawson and Joey and the Salinger five are still frequent topics of conversation. How much has really changed since my years at Tilden Middle School? My wardrobe may have acquired some business suits but when I go home for holidays, I still have a very teenage curfew. (pssst: 1 o'clock tops!)

Despite all this griping, it's actually refreshing that at a place like Harvard there are people--besides me--who aren't hurrying to grow up. I wonder if my archetypically teenage lifestyle might be part of a collective desire to enjoy the last years of essentially carefree youth? At least for now; I know I'm in good company when I feel the urge to let a little Baby Spice out.