Having split parents is hard enough in high school, but one would imagine that things get easier once moving out and heading to the promised land of college. Well, it does and doesn't. Although a lot of that stress is thankfully released from your shoulders, there are also a lot more in line to replace them. It's all a matter of how you look at it, and because that would take too much effort, I've compiled this list to demonstrate the pros and cons to being the product of a broken-home living the college life!

Con: Financial Aid

Although you are legally an adult at 18, you’re still considered financially dependent on your parents when it comes to financial aid. This presents all sorts of problems when it comes to affording an education and the scale they use to “balance” opportunities. But more specifically, when you have split parents, this can be very difficult. I know that I’ve had trouble getting information from my parents for financial aid, or even when it comes to applying for loans. An already convoluted system becomes infinitely more complex when you’re trying to finance the next four years of your life.

Con: You Have to Choose Between Your Parents

Although, once you turn 12 (at least the state of Pennsylvania, where I dwell) you can technically choose which parent you’d like to live with, and many of us still had the opportunity to see both parents regularly—within reason. Once you go to college, though, two hours away, six hours away, a plane flight away, and are leaving campus on borrowed time, you don’t always get to stop by both households. More regularly, when you’ve got half an hour between classes and can only call one parent, which one do you choose? Do you go by an every-other-day routine, granting your parents joint phone custody? Is it determined by their work schedules and who would be available at the time? Or do you just prefer talking to one above the other? Typically, it’s not a matter of wanting to talk to one parent more than the other (at least not in my case). It all boils down to circumstance or what’s on my mind. It’s not fair to either parent, and it’s not fair to you, but sometimes that’s just the way it is.

Con: You Miss Out on So Much More

I have no doubt that students miss enough in their family's lives in one household, but I can hardly keep up with one family at all, let alone two. I’ve got a sister and a niece that are so much older than they have any right to be. When I left for college, my niece couldn’t even speak. My sister knows sarcasm better than I do. In some cases (my own, anyways), you come to feel like a stranger in your own homes. You’ve fallen too far behind. You’re still catching up on Season 3, meanwhile, they’re airing Season 7. You become extended family by proxy.

Pro: Your Parents Can Move On With Their Lives

This benefits your parents more than you, but it’s also nice to see. Your mother and father are no longer tethered to each other by the Freudian knot that you are. Sure, they’ll always have you in common, but those awkward car trips from house to house are no more. They won’t have to fight over the phone or in parking lots about how to raise you or the toxic dynamic that is their post-marriage relationship (unless you’ve got those freaky mature parents who can get along, in which case, kudos to them). They may not be married, but they’re still part of a team. They’re a band that’s broken up, but still has to go through those recording studio arguments over which songwriter knows what’s best for the concept album of your life. (That’s such acorny analogy.)

Pro: When You’re With One Side of the Family, You’re With That Side of the Family

There’s always guilt for me when I visit one household over another. I feel as though I’m betraying whichever parent I’m neglecting in my trip home, but it’s the only way to make enough time for the visit to be worth the two-hour ride. That sounds like a con, but it’s also much better than having to be a resident under both of their roofs at once. You can be the member of one family at a time, and you don’t have to worry about the awkward transition from one house to the other.

Con: Who Do You Sit With at the Graduation Ceremony?

If anyone has advise on this one, get ahold of me at t.d.crawford@eagle.clarion.edu. I'm still figuring it out!