I’m remembering my 20’s. Because everyone remembers his 20’s. I dropped out of school at 20 years old, met my wife at 22, married at 24, had my first daughter at 27, and my second at 29. Yes, the average American’s roaring 20’s are full of growth, choices, excitement, and dirty diapers, usually in that order.

Twenty is the age of true adulthood, finally. When you’re a 20-something, the whole world is before you. You can be anyone you want to be (if only you could figure out who that is), do anything you want to do (if only you could figure out what), achieve anything you want to achieve (if only you weren’t such an imbecile).

For me, the 20’s began with college. Or more precisely, dropping out of college, which I finally did after failing Materials Science for the second time in a row. I was attending Northeastern University, an Electrical Engineering major, which was fun my Freshman year, when I was 18. Then I turned 19, and it became less fun, but I was still learning stuff in class, and working in an electronics lab elsewhen. By half-way through my third year, however, I had been writing software at work—instead of doing electronics—and I was terrified of academics. (Still am. Terrified of academics, that is. And that’s completely unrelated to writing software, just for the record.)