Is it ok to go home?

juillet
Sun, 06 Sep 2015 00:03:16 +0000

You are clinging to your childhood life and not taking advantage of integrating into college life. College is the next step in life and you are not ready to take it.

What? No. The idea of moving out of your house at age 18 to go live somewhere with a couple thousand peers is 1) very modern and 2) very strange. The majority of 18-25 year olds - both in the U.S. and worldwide - don’t go move into college dorms. It doesn’t mean that they’re not ready for college, or for adulthood. Adulthood doesn’t happen overnight at age 18. And generations of 18-year-olds have made normal transitions into adult life without sleeping in a dorm.

I went to college 30 minutes away from home and stayed on campus. I went home more often in my freshman year than I did later. As time went on…I wanted to go home less, because I had more to do. I made friends, joined clubs, went to class and generally lived a well-adjusted college life. (In fact, I’d say that my boyfriend had much more to do with me missing events with friends than my parents did.) Also, I’m 29 and if I lived nearby my parents I’d go visit them pretty often, maybe a couple times a week. My two sisters-in-law do live relatively close to my in-laws and they visit pretty often. I have a friend who rents out the apartment in her parent’s basement (literally). They’re well-adjusted adult with friends and hobbies and disposable income. Time spent with or proximity to your parents doesn’t change that.

It’s possible that your new college friends are questioning you because they are concerned, but it’s possible that they are concerned because the college stereotype of needing to live with peers 24/7 for four years in order to make friends has been so overhyped they’ve bought into it.

In one week going home for two nights (which presumably means you went home in the evening or afternoon and came back in the morning) isn’t going to make or break you. You made friends in high school without being there all day long, and people make friends in their natural working lives without living and sleeping nearby everyone else.