As a freshman in college, I was given a lot of freedom in August when I moved in that I did not have when I lived at home. Now I had no one telling me when to go to bed, when to eat dinner, when to do my homework, and for the first time I didn’t have a curfew. Naturally, like any other person in my position, I started staying out with friends till all hours of the night every weekend.
When family weekend rolled around in the middle of September, my friends and I were slightly disheartened; sure we were happy to see our families, but that meant that we couldn’t stay out all night like we usually do. My little sister and I are four years apart, so as a freshman in high school she’s still too young to start thinking about colleges. However, my mom thought it would be a “good experience” for her to sleep in my dorm room that Friday so she has more of an idea than I did when it comes around to her looking at schools.
My sister is my best friend and there is not a day that goes by where I don’t miss being able to run across the hallway to her bedroom, flop on her bed, and start singing at the top of my lungs before I start ranting about whatever was going on in my life. But her staying in my dorm was going to infringe on my weekend routine that I had established, and as only a freshman in high school, I didn't think she was old enough for me to introduce her to the “college life” of staying out way later than you should.
The first night she stayed with me, we sat in the basement making cookies, and I took my sister to Chick-Fil-A so that she could eat dinner really late like I do most nights. We then sat in my room watching “Stranger Things” on Netflix together. She was telling me about her first few weeks of school, how things were going with her cheerleading team, and how our mom had not in fact driven her crazy yet. We stayed up late, watching movie, drinking milkshakes and talking about life, just like we had done only a few weeks before when I was still at home. The next day was like we hadn't spent any time apart at all.
We went out to dinner one night with my friends and their families. At the end of the meal, my parents asked me and my friends what we were planning on doing that. My friends replied that they were going to karaoke at the taco place down the street from our dorm hall. I looked at my sister and I said “We have some episodes of Stranger Things we can watch, right?” She looked confused, my mom was confused, my dad was confused and my friends were certainly just as confused. When the words came out of my mouth, I thought “oh God, what have I just said?” But then as I thought about it more, I missed my sister more than I was going to miss going to karaoke and singing old 80s songs with the girls I see on a daily basis.
So I stayed in that whole weekend with my little sister instead of staying out all night with my friends, and it was the best choice I’ve made in college to date.
