Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 20. I’ve never been more terrified in my life.

I’m terrified because I now find myself described by yet another term that doesn’t suit me. When I was but a wee ‘un, 20 seemed the epitome of sophisticated young-adulthood. A dozen years have passed but the realm of the 20-year-old still seems just as distant, still the green-striped Nanny legs to my Muppet Babies world.

More than that, I’m terrified because this birthday means I’m another year closer to graduating from college, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Logically, I know this isn’t a huge deal; plenty of people don’t know what they want to do when they graduate, and plenty more make career changes in their thirties or forties. But as a college student — and especially as a college student whose parents are laying down a cool hundred grand for her education — I am expected to have planned out every single moment of my life from the second I step off stage with my bachelor’s degree in hand to the day I retire. And apparently marrying Captain Jack Sparrow and selling abstract looseleaf-paper sculptures is not a legitimate gameplan.

One of the pitfalls of American adolescence, and one of the reasons why the transition from childhood to adulthood is so difficult for us, is that it’s so discontinuous. One moment you’re a little kid, free of worries, then BANG, suddenly you’re a gawky adolescent in middle school, BANG you’re a high school student, you can drive, you can lose argument after argument with your parents, BANG you’re in college, you eat when and what you want, sleep when and with whom you want, live on your own. And then, not with a bang but with a whimper, you are huddled, naked and shivering, in the desolate wasteland of the real world, not knowing where to go or with whom to seek refuge.

Further complicating matters is the lack of a definitive marker of adulthood. Instead of a single rite of passage, we are subject to many: at 16, we can drive; at 17 (in New York) we are considered capable of making decisions about sex; at 18 we can vote; at 21 we can do pretty much anything except run for president or rent a car without paying exorbitant fees. In many other societies, youths undergo a single ceremony marking their initiation into adulthood — in these societies, there is no question as to whether someone is an adult or a child.

The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep theorized that cultural practices revolve around rites of passage, and that any change in identity has three stages: separation, when the ties between the individual and his old life are severed; transition, when the individual is especially vulnerable and is instructed in the ways of his new life; and reintegration, when the individual is reunited with his society and takes on his new role. If this is true, then it seems that we are lodged in a state of perpetual limbo between the adult world and the carefree days of our youth, never quite sure when we will finally cross the line dividing the two.

And unlike societies with fixed rituals of maturation, our society’s needs dictate where we draw the line between adult and child. A century and a half ago, children would finish schooling and begin working in their early teens. When the industrial revolution began and adults needed the precious factory jobs, teenagers were encouraged to continue their education through high school, whereupon they would enter the workforce and be treated as independent persons. As attending college became more popular, the college graduation became the rite of choice. Now, with more and more college graduates moving on to even higher education, America has become the pioneer of adultescence; adolescence has been extended into the early twenties, as increasing numbers of nascent adults cling to the halcyon days of their youth.

Compare this to societies in which no school transitions are necessary because youths are placed in apprenticeships at the appropriate age or work at home on the farm. There is no need to adjust to a new environment every four years, no uncertainty about what one will do with one’s life. The process of individuation is a gradual rather than incremental process, marked by slowly increasing responsibilities and training in how to be a successful and independent member of society. Children are involved at an early age in planting and harvesting crops, caring for younger siblings, and doing domestic work. At a designated time, adolescents are ceremonially inducted into adulthood, and from that point on they are treated as fully mature beings. It sounds almost idyllic, a world where nobody has to worry about he will do with his future or when it will begin.

That would be great, if I wanted to spend the rest of my life cultivating corn and tending to an ever-growing chorus of wailing babies, or working in a factory building flow sensors. The discontinuity of the American transition into adulthood — and the resulting terror and unpreparedness that is coupled with graduating from college — is a necessary evil in a complex society with so many options for its younger generations. The reason I can’t decide what to do after I graduate is because there are so many things I could choose to do with my degree in Human Development: I could become a professor, or a high school teacher, or even an elementary school teacher. Or I could switch majors and graduate equipped for something other than grad school. It’s a big, scary world out there, but we’re lucky that we can tailor our studies so precisely to our interests, rather than being pigeonholed into a job that we may be well-prepared for but that holds no fascination for us. I’m grateful. Really. You’ll see it in my eyes, as soon as I uncurl from the fetal position.