Going home after the semester hits each student differently. Some of us dread going back to living with our parents, while others feel relieved to get time off from classes and time away from the “on-the-go” lifestyle. Everyone always talks about the challenges of transitioning from being at home to living at college. Yet, no one really tells you how to go from surviving on your own for a year to living back at home with your family. Nothing stays the same as it did from the summer before we left for school.
How do adjust back into the way we lived before one of the most eye-opening years of our lives?
The adjustment hits everyone involved. First, you say goodbye to your college friends for the summer. Your roommate who you talked to before bed every night, your neighbors across the hall you always see when brushing your teeth and the person you sat next to in class every day going on about how annoying the course gets. We sat around with the same people day after day and we never spent time alone. When staying in a dorm, your besties live around the corner and you never got the chance to miss them—until now.
Then you say hello to your family.
You might have lost contact for a bit as you grew too busy for a weekly FaceTime chat. Your house looks a little different than it did when you left as you see your mom remodeled the kitchen and changed up the living room decor. Transitioning back into your house gets a little frustrating. On the bright side, we do get to spend time with our families and revert back to how we lived as a kid. For some of us, we get free rent, free food and lots of quality time. On the other hand, we lose a little bit of freedom. Living in a dorm room or an apartment with your friends eliminates responsibility. As long as you’re satisfied with how clean you keep your house, no one questions you. We no longer come and go as we please, and it gets harder to go out when you live outside of a college town. Even though the age 18 classifies us as “adults,” if you live with your parents you don’t make your own rules. The wise move would be to take this time to slow down. After a year of partying, take advantage of these few dry months to recover.
Now where do you stand with your high school friends?
Last summer centered around the last beach day, last pool party and the last bonfire. Most of the kids you went to school with for 12 years moved on. The last summer before college held so much build up, filled with fear and excitement of the unknown to come. This year, we sit around waiting to go back to school and just trying to fill up the time. We cherish the people we still keep in contact with, but we also realize how many of those we considered our best friends solely because we saw them everyday at school.
Things change. We deal with what gets thrown at us. These few years between high school graduation and college graduation fill up with so many unknowns. Between new relationships, new friends, new jobs and new houses, nothing stays as static as it did through the four years of high school. In just a few weeks, we go back to school and live life the way we did freshman year. But what happens if things changed at school, too? We don’t know if our college friends miss us as much as we miss them, if our classes will be harder, if rent will get more expensive. We can’t predict the future, but we prepare ourselves for the next thing—whatever that may be.
