Just like that another amazing year of college has come to an end. You’re looking forward to the summer weather, but definitely not stoked about living at home. If you’re lucky, you’re staying in your college town or doing a summer program abroad. If you’re like the rest of us, you’re back at home. No matter how good of a relationship you have with your parents, this will always be a struggle. It’s never easy-going from no rules back to listening to your parents. You’re also not in your college town so your life is going to be drastically different for the next few months.
1. Goodbye Nightlife
In college, you are walking distance from all the bars and parties. Almost every night of the week you have something to do. Now that you are home, you are away from the bars and probably don’t know of any parties unless you want to crash the high school parties (please don’t do this). Getting to the bars can be tricky and expensive. So, there goes your night life. When you’re at school, you can do whenever you want. You have no one to answer to. As soon as you get back home you have to tell your mom where you are going and when you will be coming home. Yup, just like high school.
2. Home Cooked Meals
In college most people live on what is easy and rarely make a healthy meal. Hello freshman 15. Who has time to make a full meal when you have 4 midterms the next day? The ramen diet is at least filling. Once you are home your parents will be doing a lot of cooking. It’s nice to be taken care of again. There are only a few simple pleasures as good as coming home from work to a healthy, home cooked meal. Savor this because it won’t last for long.
3. Lack of Social life
When you’re in college you have all your friends minutes away. You can hang out whenever you want. If you’re getting ready or just need to have a girls night, no problem, they’ll be right there. Heck, you might even live with them. When you are back home you might still have some friends in the area, but for the most part they are off doing different things. It’s much harder to have dinner, go out, or even catch them for some drinks. You are stuck hanging at home most of the time.
4. Seeing The Opposite Sex
When you’re in college you can date guys without any rules. You can have them over or go to their place whenever you want. Now that you’re back home it’s pretty awkward to bring a random guy back to chill at your parents’ house. Plus, if you do, you know you’ll have to answer a million questions about him later. If you go out for a night of drinking and want to bring someone back…well that would be fun to explain to your parents in the morning. Guess you just have to hit up the high school exes.
6. A Greater Sense Of Family Time
During the school the school year you are so busy studying and partying, you often don’t have a lot of time to go home especially if you are out-of-state. It’s nice to actually catch up with the family once in a while. It’s good to take advantage of having everyone around before you all move away and start a family of your own.
7. Endless Questions And Nagging
Parents want to know everything that is going on in your life. When you go home for the summer it’s a free for all when it comes to personal questions. It’s so annoying. Sometimes you just want to watch a movie and not have to talk for a second, but odds are, your days of personal time are gone for the summer. Now that you live under their roof again, you owe them answers. They are going to tell you that you didn’t do the dishes correctly, that your room is messy, and that you need to pick up your shoes.
If you’re going to go home for the summer, stay busy. Go to lots of events, get a summer job, or volunteer. You’ll get to see your parents enough to appreciate them yet not enough to drive you up the wall. Enjoy the perks of being at home because before you know it, you will be back in school with your friends and nightly take out.
Featured image via screengrab of Bridesmaids
