"So where DOES the public expect to see a 22 year old in one of the seats up front?"
In the front of a Caravan, a King Air, a Cessna 206, a Chieftain, a Citation Jet, a Beech 400, a Beech 1900, a Dornier 228, a Pilatus, a Beech 99, an MU-2, a Cessna 421, a Q400, a Dash-8, an EMB-120, etc.
Basically there are many aircraft with forgiving characteristics that let a pilot make their mistakes and correct them without catastrophic results. Most jets, save the Citations and Beech 400s, will not allow for a newer pilot to make the errors necessary for learning without major problems. Often times newer pilots will get behind aircraft, even if those pilots have logged 10,000 hours in a jet as an SIC they will find themselves in a whole new world when their name is under the PIC column of that dispatch release.
It is imperative for any good pilot to have left seat, real PIC time. I'm not talking about flying a jet or handling the yoke. I mean making the big decisions from the moment you show up at work to the moment you duty off. As I said before, a real pilot's skill isn't how smoothly they can land but how well they can plan and execute a flight in its entirety. This can only come from being in the left seat and baring the burden of command.
A young pilot that has never bore that burden and made those decisions in their entire career will be ill equipped when they upgrade. It's easy sitting in that right seat and playing armchair quarterback, but without the time gained making real decisions while commanding a flight you will flounder and you will make more mistakes than someone who has experience sitting in the captain's chair. I'd rather my pilot made their "stupid mistakes" in a King Air moving along at a comfortably slow cruise than a 737 packed with happy vacationers rocketing around at .78 mach.
We all make mistakes, we learn from them too. I can go through a lifetime of near death experiences and diaper changes I encountered in my early flying days. I made those mistakes and escaped with my life because the plane I flew allowed me to slow or turn tightly or land in a forgiving manner. Then I took the lessons learned from that sheer terror or humiliation and applied it to how I made decisions in jets. If I was in a 737 or a Gulfstream when I had gained my hubris there's a good chance I wouldn't be writing this today.