When finals finally come to a close and the school year is done its usually time for most to return home. Coming home isn’t necessarily as simple as it sounds. You have just spent the past two semesters adjusting to college life and it takes another major shift in what you are used to, to be able to return to some normality.

You have gone from a room full of people your age to a house with your parents, to having to fend for yourself when it comes to meals and cleaning, to people who are around and willing to help. There are various benefits and compromises that come with moving back home – but mostly benefits.

When you get home the posts your friends from school make on social media seem so much weirder and more detached for no reason, its hard to keep in contact and while you promise you will see each other a ton over the summer, often times you end up hanging out with your familiar high school crew. Your parents are suddenly around 24/7, and with that comes having to conform to some kind of structure. It sucks to suddenly have people to check-in with and answer to in regards to plans and day-to-day summer activities, but its nice to have people care again. You also probably will start to eat a whole lot better than you did when you were cooking for yourself. No more ramen and soup cans, but actual meals that you get to sit down to a table to eat, and spend time having conversation rather than watching it in front of a TV and hoping you don’t spill the soup you made for the fifth day in a row on your bed sheets.

You will or already have gotten hounded to get a job, and while this sucks its good to be able to have the opportunity to make some money – even though summer jobs suck. You probably suddenly have a lot of free time on your hands which really doesn’t seem to make sense because you thought you had a lot of time to chill at school but when you are finally home for summer and suddenly don’t have a class schedule, homework, or exams – you realize just how boring it can be to not have a plan. You start to really value the structure that comes with school, and after your third season in a row of whatever show you have picked on Netflix goes by, you realize how much you crave that structure once again.

While coming home for summer takes a lot of adjustment on your part, your parents are adjusting to you being back in the house as well. After a couple weeks everything will start to feel normal again and life will return to its normalcy, but until then – its kind of fun to be forced to change your expectations and environment again because every time you come home its like things never changed – but it’s an opportunity to fall in love with it all over again.