Why Wait?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how upside-down the world is for kids these days. Especially this time of year when every grade level is having a "graduation" and everyone is getting awards for something, or everything... when 8th graders and Junions and Seniors are having proms and semi-formals (there's no semi about it- kids at semis are a heck of a lot more formal than I am at yer average wedding!).
It seems like when I was in high school, it was about getting ready for adulthood. Semis and proms were to give us practice for when we were glamorous adults, attending our own adult soirees... teaching us how to behave and walk in heels and dance backward (although we never really went backward but rather around and around...). Adulthood was something we were all striving for.
Now, it seems to me, we are encouraging young people to cram all the experiences that used to be "adult" into the first 22 years of life. When I speak to young people, their focus is on college, not adulthood- they have all picked out colleges but have no idea as to what their majors will be, or what they "want to be when they grow up". it seems that the message to kids now is that life is good up until your graduation from college, that they should get all the fun in NOW, before it's too late. No one, it seems, talks with kids about what adult life is, or can be, or should be.
It makes me wonder if anything is special to kids anymore. If you've been to three proms, with three new gowns and three limos and three hair/nail/makeup appointments, how special is your senior prom? If you've graduated four times in full cap and gown and tassel regalia, how special is high school graduation?
Maybe kids today have a bigger, better capacity for seeing the specialness in things that they've done before.