I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that being at school is the bees knees. You get to spend as much time with whomever you want whenever you want, eat at your favorite fast food place 8 times a week, and have the choice of laying in bed all day, avoiding your responsibilities, and crying over almost every episode of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix. Although all these opportunities do rock, going back home for the summer provides alternative activities that just might trump everything listed previously.
1. Homemade meals.
Whether they are prepared by your parents or your best friend's parents, no fast food restaurant or dining center can compare to the real food that you have been deprived of while at school.
2. Snuggling with your pets.
Yeah, those frat dogs are cute and fun to play with at parties, but their snuggles are incomparable to the snuggles your favorite furry family member gives you the day you come home from college for the summer.
3. Reuniting with your best friends.
School pals are a great time and I love being able to hang out with them during the year, but no one matches up to the friends who you've had your entire life that live only a few streets away.
4. Eating at your favorite hometown restaurants.
There is just no way that you can say the drunk Domino's you've been ordering at 1 a.m. is even on the same scale of excellence as the pizza you've been eating your whole life at home.
5. No classes.
I know that summer classes are a pretty normal occurrence for most college students, but you and I both know that one online course is not going to give you the constant stress that those 15 hours did this past semester. And on the plus side, you probably don't even have to leave your bed to complete this class.
6. You get to live somewhere bigger than a shoe box.
No matter where you live at school, whether it is a dorm, your sorority or fraternity house, or an apartment, your space is definitely limited. Moving back into your parents' house provides you with room to breathe, walk, and comfortably live for a few months without stepping on your roommates' toes.
7. Truly appreciating where you came from.
Everyone is always excited to get out of their hometown to start somewhere new, but once you leave and come back, you really learn how special all the overlooked, small things are that you grew up with.
8. Finding a true meaning of home.
My parents always get sad when I refer to school as my "home," and although it may be your new home, living with your parents again truly shows you what home signifies and that their home will always be your real home.
I love school just as much as the next person, but I know that if I wasn't able to return to my roots and live with my parents again and again each summer, I don't think I could survive college. All of the aspects listed above are what I look forward to each Spring semester when finals roll around, and I genuinely think that we all are beyond lucky to have warm homes to come back to for the summer, filled with people and places that can't wait for us to return just as much as we can't wait to return ourselves.
