The century between 18 and 21.

I am 21. I am a politics student. I work in New York. And I am failing miserably to live up to my 18 year old selfs expectations. Sadly, I am not the only one.

Without meaning to sound too jaded about life, I am after all only 21, I have learnt that the expectations of an 18 year old are heady, ambitious ones and the realities one faces on entering your twenties limp along in comparison. Being a teenager is miraculous, painful, liberating, and very often drunken. Being in your twenties is really no different, and yet it is.

At 18 I felt I could rule the world and have government officials working for me by the time I graduated at 22. Friends and colleagues felt the same and together we entered the world thinking we were made of cast iron and nothing could stop our future plans. At 21 I have two years at university under my belt and have lived in both Berlin and New York, two of the most engaging cities in the Western world, and unfortunately, have realised I am not so much made of cast iron as of the aluminium of a coca - cola can - easily dented and easily crushed. This is all sounding very self - satisfying and so I will get to my point.

The years between 18 and 21 are the most altering. At 18 we are still relatively naive to the world yet at 21 we begin to realise that we are not who we thought we were and life is not how we thought it would be. At 21 we start to make important decisions that will affect the rest of our lives and more often than not, those decisions are a far cry from the decisions we think we would have made when we were 18. This all seems quite obvious, and yet it's not. Depression in people between the ages of 20 and 25 has risen over the last decade as many face the disappointment of life failing to live up to expectations. Television shows seduce us with high flying professionals, glamourous couples and dazzling lifestyles which all build up our expectations of how we should be and when life fails to match - we don't quite understand why.

Turning 21 is more than just being able to drink in the US or being one year older than 20, it is a step away from our expectations and a step towards the realities we all face in life. Who hasn't had that thought "oh god, I thought I'd have done so much more by now!"? 21 is when you really start to look at life and see that your 18 old self was maybe slightly overambitious and that life doesn't always go the way you planned.

That might seem like a very simple realisation to someone in their 30's, but having just turned 21, let me tell you - it's a pretty big thing.