We need to have more coming of age stories for young adults, college students, and grad students. It is high time to end the monopoly that high school has on stories about growing and changing to find your place in the world. You don’t stop growing and changing when you leave high school. In my experience it is quite the opposite.
Growing and changing is an ever constant part of life and an integral part of becoming the best person you can be. If you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward and what not. We don’t stop consuming media while we grow in these young adult years and we need to be able to see media that reflects the struggles and challenges of those ages just in the same way we need for people in high school.
When you go to college, your entire life changes drastically. For so many people, you’re out on your own for the first time with a new kind of freedom you’ve never had before. There is a lot that goes on under the hood to facilitate the change from someone graduating high school to graduating college and entering adult life. Media influences how we look at and make real life decisions and whether you like it or not, the media we consume influences the way we see and interact with the world.
Coming of age stories starring young adults also makes more sense for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that you simply have more creative freedom with the kinds of things that you can do and write about. Featuring adults allows for all kinds of settings, locations, and scenarios that simply don’t make sense for stories featuring high schoolers. Examples of this would be bars, clubs, and other places. You can have characters drink, rent cars, and do other adult activities without needing to make up some excuse for why it’s allowed in the world of the story.
The amount of freedom given to college students also allows for the story to make sense without worry of who should be watching out for them. Think of all the TV shows and movies that are constantly afflicted with “Where are your parents?” syndrome.
Finally, and certainly not least, is the fact that when your story features young adults, you can let the characters explore all parts of their sexuality. I’m not saying that stories can’t have themes where high school age people interact with their sexualities, but there are several movies and TV shows that depict sex scenes of characters who are written to be minors. That is inappropriate and unnecessary. Make sex scenes about adults, thank you. College and young adult life is much more conducive to the themes and kinds of stories we find in coming of age stories and yet is still an underrepresented demographic in the genre.
Craig Thomas can be reached at [email protected]