Since I've been a college student, I've started to realize the sense of false superiority I had in high school, a feeling that I think a lot of teenagers have about life. It was the feeling that I knew everything and didn't need anyone's help. Once I got to college and was actually on my own, I realized this was definitely not the case.
I consider myself independent, but there were so many new challenges that I didn't have to deal with when I lived at home: Laundry, relying on my own resources to fix problems, and not always having my mom to come and fix something for me, even just fixing a small thing for me. I had to learn. I had to realize I wasn't the hot sh*t I thought I was. This brings me to my point— the point that all us millennials especially seem to miss at one time or another.
We don't know everything.
Shocking, I know, but we don't. I have been in college for almost a year and a half now, and I still find myself brushing off my parents' advice, thinking, "I can handle this." I usually can't, and I usually scold myself afterward for not listening to my parents. It's okay, I'm learning.
Actually, we all need to learn.
We need to trust those around us who give us advice, not just our parents. We cannot go through life thinking that we can handle everything alone, especially at our age. As college students, we're just now starting to gain real responsibility, learning how to do things on our own, living alone, preparing for our future as adults. But in my opinion, that's just it: it's our future. We are by no means any more "adult" than our parents or authority figures. We're still learning about the world.
As college students off "on our own" at school, a lot of the time we think that we are independent completely, and we can handle anything in our lives. But that's not always the case. Often times, we do need our parents, because we don't know how to do everything. It's not even just us! We cannot forget that our parents are the reason we know how to do anything. We live in a generation where everyone believes their opinion is always best, no matter how ignorant or uneducated. We have a feeling of invincibility, that we can do anything. I'm guilty of this too.
It can be hard to remember that our parents have already been through everything we're going through, so when they're telling us how to deal with a situation, it's probably because they've been through it. I know I'm guilty of brushing off something my mom says because I think she doesn't understand, like she's never been my age, or that I think I know best. But she's my mom, of course she understands; she knows me just as well if not better than I know myself. She watched me grow up and saw what kind of person I was, and moms usually know what they're talking about when it comes to their kids. So why do we act like the older generation knows way less than we do? Most of us are just a bunch of twerps, a bunch of 18-21-year-olds who are just getting started with life, and our parents have already lived it.
For years, our parents took care of us, and now that we're off at college, it can be easy to put them on the wayside. Don't let your exciting college life get in the way of the people that got you there. Call your parents, and not just to ask for money. Don't roll your eyes when they tell you something you think is outdated or silly. Let them hug you. Talk to them and make sure they know how important they actually are to you.
Parents actually do sometimes know best. Crazy, right?
