<p>What are some disadvantages/advantages of going to school near home?</p>
<p>I am currently planning on going to school about 45 minutes away from home. What are some things I should be aware of? I know that I ought to be careful not to come home too often but is there anything else?</p>
<p>Don’t have your mom do your laundry. Do it yourself like everyone else. Corrolary: Don’t eat at home; eat in the cafeteria like everyone else.
If you go back home for anything other than an end-of-semester break, take your friends with you.
Don’t assume you know everything about the area; you’ll be surprised the things you learn my living there.
Live on campus.
Don’t hang out with old hs friends unless they’re going to the same college as you. You want to get integrated into your new social network.
Do call your mom once a week. Just because you’re only 45 minutes away doesn’t mean she won’t be sad that you’re off to college.</p>
<p>DS didn’t have a car during his freshman year when he stayed on campus. Almost every Friday he’d catch a bus that would drop him off at a mall about 15 minutes from home where I would pick him up and give him my car for the weekend.</p>
<p>Also, when he got sick, it was much easier to come home and spend a couple of days.</p>
<p>He also never has to think about what to leave at home (winter clothes/summer clothes etc) of worry about packing everything in one or two suitcases.</p>
<p>For me being able to commute to school and save that 10K a year is a plus.</p>
<p>Advantages
<p>Disadvantages
<p>“Don’t hang out with old hs friends unless they’re going to the same college as you. You want to get integrated into your new social network.”</p>
<p>I think this is a mistake. You can stay friends with your HS friends and still integrate, it’s a matter of balance. You don’t just drop friendships because you’ve gone to college, that’s a really crappy way to treat people.</p>
<p>OP: I go to school 20 minutes from home. I don’t go home except for breaks, and sometimes for the afternoon if I have a drs appointment. My mom comes up to get lunch with me maybe once a month but otherwise I may as well live across the country. It doesn’t have to be that different from living far away. For me, mostly the only difference is that going home for break is more convenient.</p>
<p>Agreed with Twisted’s first point. </p>
<p>I’m about 20 minutes from home by car, if the traffic’s good. Up to an hour and a half by public transit. Since I don’t own a car, I tend to stay on campus during the week. However, I like to see my girlfriend so I usually head home at some point during the weekend. I actually do my laundry at college though… I don’t have anything to carry all my stuff in :P</p>
<p>Honestly I don’t like my dorm, it’s bloody tiny. I can’t wait till I can get my own place.</p>
<p>I’m an in-state student. I live on campus. One thing I try to do is to be as independent as much as possible. I go home only on occassion. I do my own laundry, and I try to cut down on how much as I see my family. </p>
<p>But on the plus side, if I ever have a melt-down, my parents and home are right there for me. And I can still get some of my mom’s home-made cooking!</p>
<p>“But on the plus side, if I ever have a melt-down, my parents and home are right there for me. And I can still get some of my mom’s home-made cooking!”</p>
<p>Having this experience made me realize I don’t want to relocate out of state when I graduate if I can help it, which I always just assumed I would do. It never occurred to me I might actually like being near my mom if I don’t have to live with her. XD</p>
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<p>You can enlist the aid of your parents in the case of an emergency.</p>
<p>I hate to be a downer after all the people telling you about the wonderful advantages…</p>
<p>The important thing is that you not stay in the mindset that you’re only an hour away from your parents. Of course you’re going to visit them more often than you would if your college was across the country, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But if you find yourself thinking “I don’t have much to do this weekend, I’ll just drive home”, that’s bad. You have to learn to be independent eventually; if you don’t in college, it’s that much harder after you graduate.</p>
<p>I love going to college near home - I get to live in the dorms and have the whole “college experience” and live in a new city. But i also can go home on weekends if i feel like it, so I go home 2-3 times a month and spend Sunday with my family.</p>
<p>it sounds bad but I love my sister and dog more than my parents and I miss them so much. my sister is only 8 and we’re close and she misses me terribly while i’m in college - the poor kid always calls me and begs me to come home and I miss her 
And i can’t talk to my puppy on the phone or email him, plus he has a shorter life span than my parents, it’s important I see him and spend time with him. </p>
<p>also, it makes packing/traveling issues a lot easier. Can’t really think of any disadvantages to be honest.</p>
<p>I don’t see how college, at least living on-campus, helps me be independent. Yeah I have to learn how to deal with others, but if you’re not socially handicapped that’s not difficult. If you’re paying your own way through then yeah, but those of us whose parents pay for it, we basically just have to wake up and go to class on time, and turn in homework on time. Kinda like high school.</p>
<p>And I don’t get the whole laundry thing. Maybe I’m just that good at it, but laundry is mindless. You grab the clothes, throw them in the washer, wash them, then dry them. Add some fabric softener for good measure. If the clothes are mixed colors, and especially if any of them are new, wash them in cold water so they don’t bleed. Obviously finer clothes require a bit more care, but the labels explain it all anyway. How anyone can struggle with that but manages to get in to college blows my mind.</p>
<p>Now, living off-campus, managing bills and such, that’s gonna learn you some independence.</p>
<p>OP: how close to home are you talking about? my school is 15 minutes away in good traffic and 16 minutes away in bad traffic, and even though I live in an apartment and not at home, i save 500 dollars a month versus the dorms. that is one major plus!</p>
<p>if you are money conscious then dont live in the dorms! in fact, save a bunch of money and dont live in the dorms at all!</p>
<p>If you think that being “independent” in high school has fully prepared you for adult life, you’re almost certainly wrong. I’m sure you know HOW to do most things, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that, up until college, you have probably lived your entire life with some sort of family. Unless you plan to live in your parents’ basement, you need to learn to be comfortable without having them available all the time. That’s what’s important about the college experience, not “oh you get to learn how to do your own laundry”.</p>
<p>“If you think that being “independent” in high school has fully prepared you for adult life, you’re almost certainly wrong. I’m sure you know HOW to do most things, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that, up until college, you have probably lived your entire life with some sort of family. Unless you plan to live in your parents’ basement, you need to learn to be comfortable without having them available all the time. That’s what’s important about the college experience, not “oh you get to learn how to do your own laundry”.”</p>
<p>People always say that, but I never hear why that has to happen in college and why it can’t happen when I get a career (which I’m betting is likely somewhere outside of Michigan) and don’t have to spend the room and board I don’t need to and rack up 40K of debt.</p>
<p>There’s no reason why it CAN’T. But in college, you’re working and living with dorms full of people who are going through the same transition, so it’s easier to adjust. In your first job out of college, you’ll more likely than not have an office full of people who don’t particularly care about the newbie, and if you even have roommates they won’t care much either. According to the people I know who’ve gone through it, it’s all too easy to just sit there moping for a year because you suddenly don’t have your family around.</p>
<p>And then there’s the worst case scenario. You never moved out of your parents’ house, so of course you stay there after you get out of college… and then you don’t ever get around to leaving.</p>
<p>DCHurricane’s points are 100% spot-on.</p>
<p>That being said, though, I don’t think I would have liked going to school close to home. I honestly wanted to experience new things, and going back home all the time would just be more of the same. I did get homesick, but it only made me appreciate/enjoy my time back home a lot more whenever I had the chance to return on breaks.</p>
<p>I am an hour away from where I live. For me it’s the perfect distance because I’m far enough that I feel on my own yet still close enough that if I had to I could go back home for family events, I could easily retrieve things I forgot, my parents can come visit me or come to my concerts, etc. I just could not imagine having to travel 3+ hours to get to and from school. With that said, aside from breaks I have yet to go home for a weekend. </p>
<p>In terms of independence…interestingly enough my best friend goes to community college, has a job, does her own laundry (as do I) , pays for everything involving her car (gas, repairs, insurance), pays her phone bills, and also has to pay her own emergency room bill. Yet she tells me (who is not as financially independent as her IMO) that she feels even less independent than me for the simple fact that she is still living at home and is in constant contact with her family, whereas I am living away from home.</p>
<p>I’ll be 45 minutes from home. Though it is not that farm away I’ll be moving from the country to a college town. I already do my own laundry and pretty much everything accept pay the bills.</p>
<p>45 minutes is too far away to consider commuting and my parents want me to get the “full” college experience.</p>