What’s life without a little adult perspective? Somehow we are seniors this year, living a life somewhere in between students and adults. We’ve decided to give you some adult perspective given that we keep running into it whether we want it or not.

First, let us introduce ourselves. We are both seniors, both student teachers, and both trying to survive in this land for adults. One of us, Elizabeth Franks-North, an English and secondary education major, sleeps on a futon and lived on top and out of large moving tubs for a summer. The other, Lynelle Leinbach, a history and secondary education major, sleeps on an army cot, but don’t tell the pacifists at Goshen College. If they take it away, she’ll have to sleep on the floor.

Collectively, we are student teachers trying to figure out why our apartment didn’t come with a dresser desk, and bed like the Goshen College student apartments.

We knew going in that we wouldn’t have furniture provided for us. But what does that really look like? It looks like eating while sitting criss-cross applesauce, except we ran out of applesauce really quickly. It looks like sleeping on the ground until your cot or futon is ready for a year of use. Once that happens, you feel lucky that you are under 5’5” and can fit on it semi-comfortably. It looks like having friends over and telling them that the big empty room is the living room where we will be enjoying our evening on the floor with only an overhead light and a fan if you can turn it on. That’s right, say goodbye to Goshen’s climate controlled air conditioning. If you want to turn the fan on, forget about it unless you are the height of Peter Meyer Reimer. Those strings are short!

We were some of the lucky ones who had parents and grandparents step up and bring tables, chairs, bedside tables and footstools. But how is one supposed to know how much you’ll miss being able to put your clothes out of sight in a drawer? This is assuming you did utilize the drawers offered in the dorms. If you are not using yours, we will gladly house your dresser for you this year. Where does one put their underwear that isn’t immediately obvious to anyone to walks into the room? When we figure this out, we’ll let you know.

Stagger along with us as we manage a life that has our left halves in the student world, our right halves in the adult world and our brains doing the hokey pokey as we turn ourselves about. You may find out about how we survive this year. That’s what this column is all about.

The adult perspective here is that adults have to figure it out. Live out of a tub (unfortunately not a bathtub), sleep on a cot, and find furniture. The Depot sells everything, including furniture for half-off on the first Saturday of every month. Cots can be found in various camping stores. Walmart sells 10-gallon plastic tubs all year. Finding furniture is not limited to stores. Our first weeks living this half live have taught us that frugality and creativity are essential for survival in the adult world. The possibilities are endless even if the adult task seems insurmountable.