1. The struggle of having to re-adjust to life under parental supervision.
Upon your return home, it won’t take you long to realize that you can’t just stumble into your bedroom at 3 a.m. and expect everything to be peaches. Now that you’re living under your parents’ roof again, you’re going to have to abide by their rules. It will take time, patience, and more than a handful of curfew debates, but you will eventually get used to living like the dependent child of your former years.
2. Coming to the realization that the freshman 15 is not a myth after all.
If you have a higher level of self-control than I do, then you can skip right over this one. However, if you are like me in that you firmly believe that pizza tastes even better after 1 a.m., then you might be in for a rude awakening when attempting to squeeze into clothes that fit you perfectly last summer. If and when you find yourself in this predicament, you will have two options: get a new wardrobe, or start hitting the gym again. The former option might be a bit difficult though, considering you are now ballin’ on a budget after successfully draining your funds over the past several months, which brings me to my next point…
3. Working full-time hours in the hopes of earning back a fraction of what you spent while you were away.
Once again, my complete lack of self-restraint rears its ugly head. But we all know how incredibly easy it is to be spend-happy when you are away at school. And then, when the semester is over, you check your bank account and notice that there are a lot of zeroes in it. Which sounds great, except that there isn't another number in front of them. Thus begins the 48-hour work weeks taken on in an attempt to undo some serious financial damage—and also to begin preparing for the inevitable bankruptcy of the upcoming semester.
4. Dealing with the fact that there is literally. Nothing. To. Do.
Finding plans is no longer as easy as brushing on some mascara and herding into the nearest sweaty frat basement. Even on weeknights, your friends aren’t a five-second bare-footed prance down the hall anymore. More often than not, a good old-fashioned cuddle session with your laptop will be how you spend your night. This is also the time in your life when Netflix will become as crucial to your survival as the very air you breathe. Get pumped!
5. The onset of separation anxiety.
This one’s entirely unavoidable. From the campus that became a home. From the strangers that became friends that became family. There’s really no easy way to transition from seeing a group of people every day to not seeing them at all. And even if you succeed in making a new daily routine for yourself over the summer, it never feels quite right. Something always feels off. And a part of you knows deep down that your world won’t be completely re-aligned until the fall semester begins.
Let's face it, without summer vacation it's likely that the stress of college work would cause all of us students to crumble away into tiny unrecognizable piles of dust. But while it is nice to finally have a break from those stressful college classes, the honeymoon phase with post-college summer will swiftly come to an end, and it won’t be long before you start counting down the milliseconds until you are finally allowed to go back.
