Are we forced to grow up too fast?

Since I was a little kid I have always been thinking about my future. When I was in kindergarten I looked at the 6^th graders on the playground and couldn’t wait to be that old. In junior high I couldn’t wait to be in high school and act like the teenagers did. And once I got there, I spent high school thinking about where I would end up in college. Now that I am here I have had time to pause and look back at my life. While I am extremely happy at the path I have taken, I can’t help but wonder if it all happened too fast. Did I spend my childhood constantly seeking what was coming next? And did I really take advantage of my childhood while it lasted? We seem to live in a culture that is obsessed with tomorrow, with the future. We ask students at the age of eighteen to plan their life with little to no hesitation and before we know it we are thrown into the real world, expected to get jobs and survive on our own. As a kid I couldn’t wait to grow up and now that I am here I wish time would slow down so I could enjoy being young. The concept of maturing and being on my own always sounded so good to me but now I can’t help but raise the question, are we forced to grow up too fast? Is our youth striped of their childhood by the mere fascination of wanting to be independent? And at what stage are you defined as ‘grown up’?