As a college student, I spend most of my time living away from home, away from my family. There are pros and cons to this, but as a whole, I love being at school. As much as I love my family, it can be exhausting to come home, especially for short visits like weekends or fall break. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't ever want to just stop coming home and not see my family at all, but I can definitely think of things that are more enjoyable than how exhausted I am when I'm home.

Being at home is exhausting because, unless I'm home for a week at minimum, it's impossible to make the rounds and see everyone. My friends have conflicting schedules, so it can be stressful to try to fit everything in. During fall break, for example, I reached out to five different friends, but only one of them was available at the same time I was.

Luckily, my mom's birthday is this week, so I got to see a decent amount of family when we gathered to celebrate. I had dinner with my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and a couple of my cousins. In a different scenario, however, I definitely wouldn't have managed to see so much of my family.

Another exhausting thing about being at home is that, because so few people are able to work schedules out, I spend a lot of my time bored in my bedroom. Sure, I get to watch a lot of Netflix, but spending so much time doing nothing is exhausting in its own right. I'm used to being at school with all of my friends and always having something to do, but instead, I'm sitting around with absolutely no plans. It's nice to spend time with my family, but even then there's only so much that we do together.

I love seeing my friends and family, but it almost seems like there's no point in coming home for breaks that are shorter than a week and lacking a holiday celebration. Thanksgiving break is shorter than a week, but because of the holiday, I can usually guarantee that I'll be busy and see a significant number of family members. Anything longer than two weeks, however, creates the opposite problem: when I'm home for a month at Christmas, I run out of people to see and things to do, so I wind up bored out of my mind anyway.

Unfortunately, college doesn't work around my ideal schedule. They don't take my preferences into account when making the semester calendar, which is obviously understandable. I do wish, however, that things worked out a little bit better so that breaks were easier and more enjoyable.