Coming home from college for the summer is a tough transition that we all have to face at the end of the academic year. No matter where you go to school or where you're from, whether it's a long drive or a plane ride away, traveling between your two homes is as bittersweet as it gets.
1. Your friends that you used to see every day are no longer two doors down or a floor away.
To see them you have to get in a car or on a plane, making "come hang out" or "come to my room" no longer a part of your reality.
2. You become less independent.
At school we get used to being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want, with whomever we want. But if you're living at home with your parents, having to report to someone again gets a little annoying compared to the freedom we're used to.
3. Your feet hang off the edge of your bed again.
If your bed is anything like mine and designed for the body of a nine-year-old, you might start to regret taking your extra-long twin bed at school for granted.
4. Your food options don't consist of every brand of cereal and five-plus options for every meal of the day anymore.
While your food at school may suck, it’s nice to have the options compared to the nearly empty box of Cheerios sitting in your pantry at home and the low fat organic yogurt your mom loves. But of course we all have learned that home cooking will never come close to dining hall food.
5. The gym is no longer a short walk away, making it harder to work off all that junk food you ate at 2 a.m. on the weekends – because we all know that happened at least a few times.
6. You don’t have any early morning classes to get up for (of course until your summer job or internship starts), which could lead to sleeping half the day away – a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.
7. Unpacking becomes a collision of everything you’ve managed to stuff into your little room at school, and everything you’ve owned for the past 10 (or so) years of your life.
8. Sitting around your house with your family can get old sometimes, and if your friends are busy or not around you have no one to do fun things with.
9. You get a sense of how old you are, and how much you've grown.
Coming back home we expect everything to be the same as how we left it, but we're quick to find out that everything and everyone in our hometown is changing too.
