Any college student prides themselves with a sense of newfound freedom when first entering the campus gates at freshman orientation, and it's absolutely amazing. You finally feel like an adult because you're not imposed to parental supervision and under their roof anymore. If you want to go out for the night, that's your choice. Sexual freedom and access to drugs and alcohol are all within the fingers of the quintessential college freshman.
Throughout the semester, every freshman find themselves surely making some mistakes past 2 AM; it's normal and something that we're all going through. College is fundamentally a learning curve that everyone struggles to navigate at first. It's difficult, but soon enough, your college friends become your rock. You emotionally lean on one another for the peaks and pits of first semester when initially acclimating yourself to the relatively unfamiliar college setting.
Here are just some of the things many of my friends and I mutually experienced and learned, coming home for winter break:
1. Yeah coming to your room at 4 AM after a long night out at a local bar with friends is no longer really a choice that comes without consequence from parents, and that frankly sucks.
College freshman are so use to exercising our personal freedom to do whatever and whenever without parental supervision. Especially as a Fordham student, being so close to New York City, public transportation is so convenient for me and the opportunities of the city are infinite. If my friends and I are really bored on a Sunday afternoon and tired of campus, the city is within our fingertips. However, when we're back home, it's genuinely a collectively traumatic struggle for us when we suddenly realized that now we're under our parents' roof once again and it's their rules that we have to follow once again.
2. Missing your roommate and not being able to see all your college friends for an entire month.
I low-key realized how much I took for granted just the comfort of being in such a close walking-proximity to all your friends on campus – it sucks and can often get seriously lonely AF when you miss your college friends!
3. Everyone in your family just getting on each other's nerve.
Enough said.
4. Overpacking and just packing the most unnecessary things because you never ended up wearing half the clothes you brought back home...
I came back home with two duffles and one carry on, but I came back to college with two duffles and two carry ons – something doesn't really add up...
5. Coming to the realization that college naturally does change a lot of people, so the people who may have been one your closest friends in high school might just seem unfamiliar to you compared to how you remember them. Also, you changed too. It's an unfortunate reality...
Realizing that you detached yourself from a lot of your high school friends since graduation because you grew apart? Exclusively just keeping in touch with just a few friends from your hometown that you actually still like, so you just hung out with them most of the break? Because if so, like same ...
6. Every time you would actually leave your house, you would often found myself fearing that you would just run into someone who I really did not want to run into from high school which is absolutely terrifying quite honestly, so you check Snap Maps just to play it safe.
Despite my honest efforts, I still managed to run into my sophomore year Chemistry teacher at ShopRite...
7. Finding yourself staying in bed most of the day on Netflix and TikTok way too much because there is NOTHING to do in your hometown.
Missing your college friends and just high-key wanting to go back is a real common struggle for a lot of college freshman on break. In conclusion, college winter break can be a restful time a way from academics, but it can also suck at times.
