Dear mom and dad,

Being told what to do surely does make life easier, involving far less thinking than does making my own decisions, but the freedom of being able to wear what I want daily, doing homework how I want to, and sleep when I want to (when I do/can). Surely all this freedom must be catching up to me, and making decisions that are worse than what you told me to do is what makes me an adult. Only when I learn from mistakes that rose from my own personal decisions, it sticks.

When I'm awake, you aren't. When I need to make an important outfit decision for a dinner party, you may be at work at that time or asleep. This is when I know I need to make those decisions myself and learn not to do them or to do it differently when it doesn't work out.

Procrastination is a way of life in college, and not because I want to relax, but because there's other work to be submitted just a minute before that other work does. Taking time for myself isn't discouraged either when I live all by myself thousands of miles away in a different culture. So if that's the reason for my procrastination, then so be it. But when I remember that there's no one to scold me or ground me when I don't get that work done, and when all it does is reflect on my report card at the end of the semester, I'd wish I made a better decision that Saturday night. That's when I learn the kind of decisions to make.

So, mom and dad, you should know that I've grown a lot these few months that you haven't seen me for, controlled me for, physically cared for me. Between all this decision making and turning into a self-sufficient adult, I realized that I would not be the person I am today without you. I wouldn't be able to differentiate a bad decision from a good one (even if I do pick the former sometimes).