It's that time of year again where you move back home from a rough semester at school, just wanting to kick back and relax after studying your booty off for finals. The first couple of days are just like a nice long weekend, but then stuff like this starts to happen...
1. You have to start being an active member of your household again.
The excuse, "I don't live here" doesn't work anymore, because, well, you do. For the next three months, you're expected to do your share of chores. No more letting the dishes accumulate until you run out of spoons, is that really how your mother raised you? (Yes)
2. The honeymoon period where your parents just love having you home ends.
No matter how excited your mom is that you're home after nine long months of being at school, living harmoniously with four other people, two dogs and a fish is just impossible.
3. You get to eat real food again.
Even if you have no complaints about your dining hall, eating a home cooked meal is like finally sitting down after a long day nonstop walking. You've missed Chipotle almost as much as you've missed your dog, and fresh vegetables and fruit are life changing after a semester of canned and frozen produce.
4. You realize that life at home has gone on without you.
And it's weird. As much as you love being away at school, sometimes it's sad to think that your family is making memories and functioning without you there. They laugh about things you don't know about, and you don't understand what your siblings are talking about when they reference how weird dad's cooking has been in the past couple of months.
5. Your dogs follow you around like you're going to leave again.
They were so excited when you came home, and they're going to make sure you never leave again. They curl up next to you even when you don't have food, and you can see them crying from the window when you leave to go to the store.
6. You can finally turn off your school email.
After a long, long semester of getting over 20 emails a day, you can turn off the notifications for your school email and not worry about being available 24/7.
7. You get a normal amount of sleep every night.
The weirdest thing about sleeping a healthy 8-10 hours a night is how tired and sore you are when you wake up at 10am instead of seven. You feel like you've wasted so much of the day by sleeping, but then you get over that feeling and take another nap because you deserve it.
8. You can finally binge watch that TV show you've been saving for after finals.
You didn't want to start a new show because you knew you didn't have the mental capacity towards the end of the semester to fully pay attention while watching it, so you saved it for summer. Now, you have 3 months of being able to catch up on all the shows you've been saving for just this moment.
9. You don't have to pay for your own groceries anymore.
Even if you didn't while you were at school, you don't have to worry about going to the store and worrying about what exactly to spend the 20 dollars your mom gave you on. At home, you have a real pantry stocked with food and a real kitchen to make real food in. It's heaven.
10. You can't spend a whole week doing nothing, as much as you'd like to...
Your parents give you a solid weekend of relaxing, but after that, they start infiltrating your brain with the guilt of not working. Even if they never come right out and say it (mine do), you need to get a job or go back to your summer job ASAP. The years of being a child in the summer have sadly passed.
11. ...so you go back to that summer job again.
Internship, shminternship. You'd rather spend the summer making popcorn at the movie theater or making Frappuccinos for those teenagers you envy.
12. You start to really miss your friends from school.
Nothing beats being able to yell down the hallway for someone at the other end, or popping into someone's room to borrow something, and end up spending three hours laughing over something idiotic and hilarious. You miss having people who love to binge-watch Parks and Rec just as much as you do.
13. You have to reestablish dominance in your family.
When your mom comes home with your siblings' favorite snacks and not yours, you have to keep reminding everyone that you still exist. Especially if you're the oldest child, you have to make sure your siblings still understand that you're top dog here.
14. You hang out with the high school friends you haven't lost touch with.
There are few things better than friends who understand what it was like to grow up in your hometown. You all went through the awkward stage together, and that's made you closer than you ever thought possible. Hanging out again is like nothing's changed, even though you're all very different people. You still have a blast, and they make coming home that much easier.
15. You have a script down for when people ask you how the semester went.
"Yeah, Aunt Jan, it's really weird being home... The semester was long, but I made it through... No, I don't have a boyfriend... I passed all my classes...I still don't really know what I want to do with my life" The questions usually end up being the exact same, and you've got it down to a science for how little you have to really say about how the year actually went.
