The best part about going to college, for most part, is being away from home. Leaving your parents' comfy, but sometimes smothering, nest to go discover the outside world. Well, some of us don’t always get this wonderful privilege. Some of us choose, or have it chosen for us, to stay at home and commute to college. Maybe it’s cheaper, maybe you live down the street from the school, but whatever the case, you’ve found yourself living at home while commuting to college and thus may have experienced at least one of these struggles:
1. You have to drive to school Every. SINGLE. DAY!
This one is clearly obvious, but also super annoying! You drive to school every single day, except the days you don’t feel like it, which is probably one of the pros of living on campus. Even when it’s cold outside, or you're tired or just don’t feel like going to class, you can still go to class, because it’s just a short walk from your dorm, or at least have an extra thirty minutes to an hour to decide or prepare yourself to go. Meanwhile, us folks who live at home have to decide early if we’re going to skip a class, or all of them, because if we change our minds and decide to go, it might be too late and we end up missing it anyway.
2. You want a job, but don’t know if you should get one where you go to school, or close to where you live
This is true especially if you live in a different town/city from where you’re going to school. Do you find a job close to school and just go to work after you school? But then what about the weekends, or holiday breaks, or summer? Then what? Or do you find a job closer to home and then struggle to to get to work on time after school each day? I’m sure there’s some happy medium, but right now I choose to complain about this. It’s annoying.
3. Even if you don’t work, you work
All your friends who live on campus or apartments think you’ve got the easy life. Your parents pay for the roof over your head, food in the fridge, gas in your car. Life couldn’t be better.
WRONG!
Even without a minimum wage paying job, you still work. Your parents expect to come home to a clean house regardless if the mess is yours or not and don’t bother to ask about your three exams coming up, your paper on Othello or that group project you can’t wait to do all the work on. It’s not as easy at some people make it sound, but I guess it beats paying bills.
4. No space, no privacy, no fun
College is a time when you’re exploring new things and learning more about yourself. You learn about veganism and think you might want to give it a try. Something you wouldn’t think twice about it being a real problem if you were staying on campus or in an apartment, but you live at home and your parents laugh at your (not that ridiculous) grocery requests. So, you try another route. You discover you really like working out and the perk of living at home is, your parents have a home gym! Great, only every five seconds someone comes in and disrupts your morning jog to ask a stupid question like who drank all the milk (that you stopped drinking because, hello, veganism). So yeah, no space, no privacy, not fun.
5. Your parents are always there, asking about homework, grades, GPA
If you moved away to college or even live on campus a half hour to an hour away from home, you may get this in the form of weekly phone calls. However, those of us who live at home do not. We get these questions at least once a day, or twice a day, depending on if our parents forgot they already asked or not. The nagging is to be expected, especially if your parents are paying for your tuition, car, apartment, housing, food, books, etc. And also because they’re your parents and want you to do well, but it still gets annoying. And if you didn’t live with them, at least you could ignore the weekly phone call of nagging (just kidding-- sort of).
