You may remember one of my articles from a while ago where I talked about the ups and downs of growing up. Well, after a trip to New York, two weeks at the Summer Enrichment Program at the University of Virginia, and a Durham Bulls baseball game, I’ve decided I have more to say on that topic.

First, in New York, we went to two Broadway musicals (Matilda and Pippin), and we also stayed up late eating incredibly good food and talking with friends. Then, at the Summer Enrichment Program, we went to bed at 10:00 and got up at 6:30 every day. Plus, on the last night, we were allowed to stay up as long as we wanted to (I stayed up until 1:00 am). Finally, the baseball game started at roughly 7:05, which meant that it ended at approximately 9:30.

Are you seeing a pattern here? All of these have been times that I’ve been having a lot of fun but haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. As I’m writing this, I’m very tired — which isn’t, as you know, a great feeling.

And I’m only 11. I can assume that, as one gets older, they are more tired more often. They work hard all day at their jobs, then have events in the evening. If that is part of growing up, I’m not so sure I want to experience that.

My next look at the world of adults came at the Summer Enrichment Program where one of the classes I took was about personal finance. We started as 18-year-olds and ended up, at the end of the class, 65-year-olds. We were given a certain amount of money to start and then got a minimum-wage job and started paying our bills.

As the class went on, we were able to choose a better-paying job but even that came with student loans to repay. And all of us got more and more bills. It was really hard trying to manage everything.

Again, this is an example of something that adults definitely have to worry about and kids don’t. And in the class, we only paid one utility every month and one expense for our “kids” every month, etc. It must be much harder than that in real life.

In conjunction with my other post on this topic, my desire to grow up has gone down. However, there are still the very good parts of growing up, such as the independence you gain. This is just one example of one of my favorite ideas: Nothing is all and only good or bad.

Are these things you have experienced? Do you remember thinking some of this as a child? Let me know in the comments below.