while frustrated by my lack over over-achieverness as a young professional, my exhaustion this weekend helped me put it all in perspective: i am working a full-time job and a part-time job, volunteering on weekends and occasionally on weeknights, trying to produce and perfect 30 grad school applications, traveling to law schools, attending business school presentations, entertaining a boyfriend, and trying to have a social life.

trying to have a social life. i never said succeeding.

did i mention the grad school applications?

apparently, there are a lot of adults who cannot appreciate my application drama, and as such, the director of the youth group i volunteer for has informed me that i'm less-than-adequate at my job.

so for those keeping score, i suck at my full-time job, my part-time job and my volunteer job.

despite not being voted "most likely to be a loser when he/she grows up," i'm an advisor for the jewish youth group that i participated in during high school. it's not because i have nothing better to do (i don't), it's just that the organization profoundly affected me, and i feel i should "give back."

whatever that means.

turns out that notwithstanding my belief that a dozen high school ladies don't need to be babysat when they get together to watch "pretty woman," the youth group administration thinks they do. i mean really, i can't imagine what sort of trouble they could really get into.

oh wait. yes i can.

yesterday, we had an advisor training to discuss some of the serious issues we may face as advisors with our high schoolers. which essentially boiled down to

every
single
thing ... i did in high school.

i thought about it. well really, i thought about all the really bad things i did in youth group. "borrowing" signs from stores, starting food fights in food courts, driving at least twice the speed limit -- not to mention the co-ed sleepovers, the "unofficial programs," the skinny-dipping.

the one program that kept coming to mind was sweetheart parties. in youth group, there were girl chapters and there were guy chapters -- which were essentially frameworks for doing jewish things together. and not jewish things. and sometimes illegal things.

only sometimes.

sweethearts were "honorary" guy members that girl chapters elected and vice versa. i assumed sweethearts were a well-conceived plan to balance out the testosterone and estrogen imbalances that all high schoolers suffer. but apparently it's really a well-conceived plan to produce jewish babies.

to elect sweethearts, we'd throw a killer dance party during which we would privately video tape interviews with candidates "running" for sweetheart. but the interview process never really included questions like "tell us about yourself" or "how do you anticipate this mba playing out in your future career plans?"

let's just say that many of my interviews may have involved a banana, cleavage, and a an imploded coke can.

as high schoolers, we could not wait for the parties to begin at 8pm. we could not wait for them to end at 11pm. we could not wait to watch the videos and vote until 3am. we could not wait for the honor to drive the infamous 5am sweetheart caravan. we could not wait to be so tired that we'd collapse by the time we got home at 8am.

now that i'm an advisor, i learned that some of my favorite memories from high school are not only against policy -- but also quasi-illegal.

so when i got home last night from the advisor training, i called my mom and asked her how she let me do all these awful things.

"debb, awful isn't staying up late. or having sleepovers. or doing stupid things occasionally," my mom said. "awful is putting a gun to someone's head. awful is killing someone. you guys weren’t awful. you were just doing what kids do when they grow up."

oh.

"more importantly," she began. "what do you think it means that now you can look back at things you did and realize how stupid and unsafe they were?"

crap. hopefully she is not implying that i'm becoming an adult with better judgment.

i thought for a long time about our conversation. sure, we definitely did things we shouldn't have done. but we didn't do drugs. we didn't drink and drive. we didn't kill anyone (that we know of). we were just doing the mischievous things that mischievous kids do when they're growing up.

testing boundaries. pushing the envelope. making mistakes.

and i guess making bad choices, dealing with the consequences, and learning for the next time is part of growing up.

because look, i turned out alright.

(sorta.)