“Will you wash this shirt?”
“What’s for dinner?”
“Will you wake me up in the morning?”
“What’s my curfew tonight?”
“Do I really have to clean my room?”
I have said these things since I could talk. Now, I’m hundreds of miles from the people I asked these questions to and being able to ask them. These were the things I took for granted.
When you say you are going away for college people feel the need to tell you over and over again how much you’ll miss home, how much fun you’ll have, and that it’s an experience you’ll never forget. Everyone seems to leave out that leaving home means leaving all you structure behind. It’s an unspoken truth that becomes reality when your hundreds of miles away from the structure you had your whole life. Independence is amazing until your realize you have to do EVERYTHING by yourself.
1. Having clean clothes
I use to always just know I had clean clothes or that I could, at least, wash them last minute if I needed too. There was no question that if my clothes needed to be washed my parent would wash them in a heartbeat. Now, I not only have to wash all my clothes myself but sometimes the washer and dryer aren’t available because I share them with over 100 other students. Don’t even get me started on people taking other people clothes out of the washer and dryer. Let’s go back to the days something was dirty, someone washed it them I got it back two hours later.
2. A home-cooked meal
I use to ask my mom every night what was for dinner. Now, I ask myself “Microwavable food again or walk to go get food?” Let’s be honest the answer is usually microwavable but wasting money on delivery seems to always be an option. The extra money is usually worth not having to walk to get food. Let’s go back to the days I would get home at night to see dinner sitting on the table. No microwavable, no delivery, no campus food will ever compare to my mamma’s home cooking.
3. Someone waking you up
Hitting my alarm clock and saying “I should be in class right now” has happened more times than I would like to admit since I have gotten to college. When you don’t have a parent standing in your doorway telling you that you need to get up, motivation turns into hitting snooze an extra 10 times. I can always hear my parent’s voices in the back of my head saying “get up for class” but sometimes my bed is just too comfy, sorry mom and dad. The same day I miss the class I think was the best decision of my life until the next week when I’m taking an exam and have no idea what the answer is to the one question. In that moment, I wish my parents would have been back in my doorway yelling at me to get up.
4. Having a curfew
“Be in the door by 11:00” “I will give you until 12:00 tonight” “11:30 and no later” After 18 years of trying to talk my parents out of giving me a curfew I spend rough mornings wishing I would’ve had a curfew the night before. When going home isn’t a priority it seems to become a distant place filled with priorities that are easy to avoid. From staying at the library studying until 3 a.m. to staying at a house with friends until 4 a.m., when you have an 8 a.m. class it doesn’t matter where you were. All that matters is you're struggling to stay awake and paying attention is impossible. These are the mornings I wish I have had a curfew the night before.
5. A clean room
Nothing was more frustrating than when I was ready to relax after a long day and my mom told me to clean something. I remember the days I came home after school to walk across a vacuumed carpet and everything around me was put away, but with classes, homework, studying for exams, grocery shopping, and finding time for fun, that clean room isn’t a reality anymore. When you have free time in college it will be spent sleeping or studying. Some days I am content with my dirty room, but the days that I cannot find a shirt, I step on something sharp, or I want to have someone over. Those are the days I wish my parents were over my shoulder telling me to clean my room.
I never in my life thought I would be wishing my mom would yell at me to clean, my dad would be in my doorway waking me up, or that I would have to beg people to do my laundry. If there is one thing moving away from home taught me, it was how unappreciative I was while I was home. I was oblivious to how much my parents did for me and looking back I was beyond blessed to live in a house with so much structure. When you are hundreds of miles away from home, these are the things you start to appreciate.
