Everyone's always so excited to move back home for the summer after being super stressed out from exam week.
When the moment finally arrives and you're in your home of 18 years, it doesn't quite feel as climatic and fun as you thought it would be.
You know how the saying goes "the grass isn't always greener on the other side". Here are the top seven struggles of moving back home for the summer:
1. You remember how boring your hometown is.
Unless you live in the city you can relate to this huge struggle. After two weeks your everything is "been there, done that." How many times can I go to the beach a week before it becomes hazardous to my health?
On another note, instead of going out on the weekends to CDBS, The Study or whatever bar is by your college, you're stuck going to house parties thrown by people you don't know and hope that the neighbors don't call the cops to shut it down.
2. Work, Work, Work.
Working is good for a lot of reasons, like earning money, because odds are you're probably broke from college.
Work keeps you busy and that's good depending on the type of person you are, but over the summer for me it feels like your days off are four hours long and the days you work at three days long.
When your only job is to have a job, you stop distinguishing days by their names (Monday,Tuesday, etc) and start categorizing them by workdays and days off.
Plus, let's face it, having to put on a fake smile everyday and being nice to rude customers who just seem to want to ruin your day is mentally EXHAUSTING.
3. Parents a.k.a Mom Dad a.k.a Trinidad and Andy.
Whenever we want to assume it or not, parents always want the best for us. That means sometimes they have to be harsh on us.
I love my parents, but after you go off to college and become your own person it's a hard adjustment coming home and having to follow rules, like always having your room clean and being up before two p.m., which you didn't have to follow for nine months.
It took three weeks before my parents realized that "living the happiest life I can live" for me meant sitting at home playing computer games while watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air reruns.
They literally harassed me to get a job for three weeks until I finally did, it was annoying but at least now I'm making money.
4. You miss your college friends.
After two semesters of going out together and then all waking up in the morning to go to the dining hall to talk about what went wrong the night before, helping them cram for their Calculus exam, and even talking them out of dropping out of college because they think they're the next Mark Zuckerberg and will become a billionaire, you start missing them.
When you come home you realize not even your hometown friends of years can replace them. Plus it sucks that they are no longer a short walking distance away.
5. Eating at home.
Even though sometimes the dining halls started to slack, you could always find something to eat whether it was 9am or 1:30am.
At home you have to either fight for last night's leftovers or make your own food.
The worst part about eating food at home is that you have to clean up after yourself when usually you would just put your empty plate on the magical conveyor and it would disappear forever.
6. Personal space.
"Personal space" and "childhood home" aren't even in the same dictionary. When you move back home you can't just go to your room, lock the door and know that no one will disturb you.
When you go to your room at home and close the door you get asked a million questions like "why don't you want to spend time with us" or "why don't you talk to us" that guilt you back into spending time with your family so they don't feel unloved.
Sometimes we need to breathe and we like being alone for a little bit. It refreshes our mind and we can be ourselves, which involves watching dumb movies or aggressively refreshing our Twitter feed.
7. Running into former classmates.
That awkward moment when you run into someone you briefly had a class with in high school at the grocery store.
Then, a really forced conversation starts that involves questions like "how are you?" or "how's college?" and the ever so memorable "we should hangout some time."
Come on, both parties know that they just said that to be cordial.
It's weird because they remind you of the high school person you were a year ago. Also you both lie a little about your accomplishments since graduation in order to one-up each other from time to time.
