Throughout my entire childhood, I have always looked forward to summer. Summer meant staying up late, eating ice cream on the regular, living at the pool and (most importantly) no homework

It was a three-month period that I looked forward to almost more than Christmas Day. As I grew up, my favorite season started to change. At first, there were just small changes to my beloved time of the year. Sports started to take over my life, pool days started to occur less often and friends started getting part-time jobs, which made it harder to hang out every day. These changes were just small setbacks to my love of summertime.

My parents always told me that growing up meant more responsibilities and less downtime. However, I did not realize growing up meant losing the freedom that summer has always promised.

The summer after my first year of college was when I started to realize my summers were going to fade quicker than my tan lines.

College introduced freedom and no curfew. It allowed weekends to be dedicated to eating food, being with friends and watching as much Netflix as I wanted. My friends were just down the hallway, and I basically spent every living second with them. As summer crept up on the end of my first year, I began to get excited. My favorite time of the year was approaching, and I needed a well-deserved break from exams.

It was not until my second week of summer that I started to realize it was going to be very different from summers in the past. The people that I grew up with came back different and broke. Work consumed our lives, and we all secretly wished to be back at our separate campuses.

However, as another school year passed, another non-relaxing summer approached. This summer is when I came to some realizations.

1. Work will consume the lives of your friends as well as your own life.

Working is not only necessary to avoid going completely and utterly broke, it is also a new lifestyle. Your days begin to consist of waking up for work, driving to work, eating food on your lunch break, working more, getting off work, taking a two-hour nap, eating dinner and going to bed early so you are rested for work the next day.

2. Staying up late means being tucked in bed by 10 p.m. at the latest.

Hanging out with friends until 2 a.m. is fun until you realize you have to be awake in less than four hours. You start to become this sleep-deprived monster unless you get at least eight hours of sleep. This self-inflicted curfew tends to prevent all those crazy late-night adventures you once had in high school.

3. Hanging with friends has become a monthly occurrence (if that).

Not only is there no time to hang with friends, there is also the introduction of internships. College friends are starting to spend their summers in states throughout the country devoting their lives to companies. High school friends have started to drift away and grow apart from you. A monthly lunch has started to replace the nightly sleepovers you once had. Soon enough you find yourself not having time for anyone but your bed.

4. Your family members have become your new best friends.

You used to be embarrassed to go shopping with your mom. However, now your mom has become your new fashion expert. Your siblings have become your favorite movie binge-watchers, and your dad has become your go-to Sunday morning breakfast date.

5. Most importantly, summer has started to become all about you.

Summers in the past used to center around what everyone else was doing. That still may be true when it comes to the yearly summer pool party, the occasional birthday dinner or those summer date nights you spend all week looking forward to. However, you find yourself finding peace in being alone for the 16th night in a row. Boredom will take over every now and then, but summer has matured along with you.

Summer will never be like how it used to be, but that is not always a bad thing. Growing up means change, and accepting change will always be better than dwelling on it. Summer may be different, but those glorious pool days will still be what I look forward to more than anything.