Dear Parents,

Hi! As I'm staring down my last 2.5 semesters of undergrad, I just wanted to tell you about a few things.

I want to come home, I do, but I have so much going on at school that I can't as much as I want to. I wish I could escape my study bubble life here to come home to the familiarity of the piano with the sticky middle B flat and family dinners and kiddos waking me up before 8. Instead, I'm constantly studying, rewriting notes, and trying to get ahead on my work for the next week. I'd love to take a break, but a lot of the time, I just can't. I'll always be there for holidays and my siblings' birthdays. I know sometimes that doesn't feel like a lot, but I'm trying.

I'm trying really hard. I'm trying to keep my grades and GPA up for grad school applications, take care of my mental health, pay bills, make time for you and my friends, and do some things not related to school to make sure I don't go crazy from the constant on-the-go lifestyle I'm trying to manage right now. I just want you to understand I'm trying my best to manage all of this. If I cancel coming home because I seem unreasonably stressed, I'm sorry. I'm trying to manage it all, and at the moment, school is my job. I don't want it to get in the way, but sometimes things come up and I end up needing to work on things for school instead of coming home.

As I'm paying my own bills and tuition and general costs of living, I've realized how hard it is to do all the adult money things. Budgeting can be rough, and meal planning is hard. I know you usually planned what we were eating as you opened the freezer to see what we had, but thank you for making sure we always had a good homemade meal every night. I don't know how you managed it all.

I don't call you as much as I did my first couple years. Granted, we lost a lot of people those first couple years, but I also knew I could call you and receive support. I just want to be able to call you about how crazy life is and receive support and be told that I can do this, no matter how stressful it is. Especially these last few semesters leading to graduation--it's going to be a crazy ride. All I want and need to hear is just your support. That I can do this, that what I'm going through does kinda suck, but I can pull it together. I need you to help me hear the voice of reason telling me to stop freaking out and actually calculate what grades I can get and still pull through to pass.

I realize it must be hard with me really starting to be more independent and starting to really learn how to do this on my own, especially since I'm the first of your kids to do this, and the next one is just starting high school this year. Yeah, I know, it's weird for me, too.

Love, Your College Student