Now that school is out for the summer, your bedroom at home is filed with piles of boxes and totes, you've said goodbye to your roommates, and you're traveling back home, you're dreading the hell week that will be readjusting to life back at home after being away for so long. Adjusting to college is hard enough in itself and now you have to readjust to being back at home? The world works in strange ways.
Firstly, you have lost all motivation to unpack the fifteen different boxes that are sitting in that one corner of your room. Don't deny it, you've been home for a week and the only thing you've touched is that extra phone charger in one of your bags and even that required some deeper motivation.
Second is the fact that you have to readjust into your own bed which I learned is even less comfortable than the bed in my dorm room. Now I don't know why this is but I find myself missing my dorm bed because I thought it was much more comfortable than my bed here at home. I may be standing alone on this one...
Thirdly, the food at home is so much better than the food at school. But as tired as you were of the same old boring crap that you got for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you do miss that gross cafeteria food. The other day, I got a text from one of my roommates saying that she wanted food from the dining hall and I got so tired of that food toward the end of the semester that I swore I would never want to eat that food again. Well, she texted me and I craved a buffalo chicken pizza from there for the next four hours.
The fourth aspect of the readjustment process is (also in my opinion: the worst aspect) laundry. You've been doing laundry on your own for the past however many months because you reached the limit on how long you could go with wearing dirty jeans but now that you're home and have other clothes still in drawers, you don't have to worry about running out. Because of this, you consistently put off doing laundry despite your mom's nagging and pestering and have an overflowing hamper with no intention of doing anything about it. Speaking from personal experience, just do your damn laundry.
Missing your school friends (including your roommates) is definitely part of readjusting to life back at home. It sucks going from seeing their faces every day and eating every meal with them to maybe seeing them only once or twice over the summer break (distance sucks). Which brings me to my next point.
Your social life is completely changed once you're back at home because when you would go out on Friday and Saturday nights to whatever party and do whatever with whatever people, can't be done because instead you're siting in sweatpants eating ice cream watching a movie by yourself at 10 PM on a Friday (which all in all doesn't sound like a bad night if you ask me) or it'll be 8:45 on a Saturday night and you tell yourself that you have to start getting ready to go out, planning your outfit, hair, and makeup in your head, until you realize that you actually don't have any plans whatsoever. Talk about a buzzkill.
The seventh aspect of readjusting to life back at home is the fact that homework is no longer a thing (unless you're taking summer classes, then in that case-good luck) and stress from school has pretty much disappeared. Isn't it a great feeling?! No more having to worry about getting papers in on time or worrying about midterms and finals for a few months! Again, if you're taking summer classes, disregard this whole point and skip to the next paragraph because I'm sure this one will upset you.
The final aspect that you must readjust to after college is out for the summer and you're moved back home is your sleep schedule. If you live in a relatively boring town like I do, the time to do anything is 8:30/9 PM as opposed to things really getting started around 10:30/11 PM in college. With nothing to do, you're exhausted by 10 and ready to hit the hay. Then, expecting to wake up at a normal hour because you went to bed "early," you don't end up waking up until 1 PM to make up for all of those long nights spent in the library cramming for finals or finishing a paper that was due the next morning.
All in all, it's nice to be home but it takes a few days to get used to living in your own home again, especially if you've considered your dorm room home for the last year. It's god to be home with your family again because even though they may not admit it, they did miss you and they want to spend time with you so don't leave them hanging all summer, make plans with them, at least every once in awhile. Once you get past those first few rough days, you'll get back into the swing of things again and you'll be enjoying summer at home in no time.
