This is a really strange article for me to be writing, because if you ask anyone -- I was not excited to go off to college. I truly, wholeheartedly, and completely didn’t think that I would last. I’d lived in the same bedroom for 18 years, with a mother that packed my school lunches until the last day of senior year. As such, the likelihood of my taking the world (or college campus) by storm felt pretty outlandish.

Months later, here I am. It was only yesterday that I cleaned out my dorm and said goodbye to people that have come close to my heart. And it’s really hard. College wasn’t as terrifying (notice the word “as”) as I’d envisioned. I found a major, a sorority, and a study-abroad program. Life was once filled with an anxiety-inducing number of variables, but is now beginning to feel more concrete.

Those decisions listed above were scary to decide without my parents standing beside me, as I am extremely guilty of being too dependent on them. Until this year, my mom did my laundry, drove me to school, made my appointments… everything. My freshman year was the first time that I was challenged to stray from these (kind of pathetic) habits. But every new college student has their unique independence to gain and habits to stray from. To decide whether to go, or not go to class. Or whether to begin a new Netflix series at 3 in the morning despite an 8 A.M. lecture fast approaching. Dumb stuff like that feels like a luxurious decision compared to the restraints that high school life can hold.

Now, as I’m looking around my sky-blue, childhood bedroom with decorative butterflies strewn across the walls, it feels more foreign than cozy. My parents woke me up this morning when for the last eight months that’s been my iPhone’s job (and I could ignore it with no hard feelings). I took a coke out of the fridge at 10 P.M., and you’d think I had just returned from a tattoo parlor.

And I thought to myself; It is going to be a long summer... we have become very different.

But I guess what I have to remember, is that I could never have gained any independence without everything that they’ve taught me so far. No; laundry and cooking weren’t my forte as I entered school because they had always done that for me -- but because of them I acclimated to college in ways that I never could have imagined. I could strike up a conversation with a stranger, or ask a question in a class comprised mostly of upperclassmen. They are the reason that I adjusted so well, and the reason that it was so hard to leave.

So as we all head home for the summer, and are inevitably annoyed at the differences between college and home life -- recognize what our parents have contributed to make college as great as it is. No matter how wise and wonderful we think that we are, we didn’t get here on our own. And we still have a long way to go.

I can already feel myself missing the people at school that mean so much to me. I also feel myself getting short in my responses to my parents. I need to remember that without them, I wouldn’t have the capacity to love college or the people that I've met there so dearly.

So next time your parents wake you up at 9 A.M. because that’s when their day is in full swing, try politely explaining that you’d like a few extra minutes of sleep (which I will try and do tomorrow, I swear).

I appreciate and love you, Mom and Dad. We will survive this summer!