It’s the middle of May, you are finally done with all of your finals and you have officially finished your first year of college. Whether you live 30 miles or 830 miles away from your college, moving onto a new campus took a ton of courage and independence. However, over the past eight months, you have begun to recognize a once foreign place as your new “home”. During your first year on a college campus, you have experienced everything from realizing the independent nature of college courses to going to your first real college party. Every day you have learned something new, and while being back at home, all of that has stopped. Although you appreciate your hometown family and friends, nothing holds the excitement of living in an area that is so rich in new experiences. Here are the five stages each college student goes through when they are reintroduced to their hometown routines.

1. Reuniting with family

Of course, when you first arrive home, you are overwhelmed with excitement to see your family. You never realized how much you would miss their company. You jump back to having heart-to-hearts with your mom, cooking with your dad, and bickering with your siblings like you haven’t missed a beat. Even though this is great at first, your parents struggle with dealing with your new-found independence, and this becomes very annoying very quickly. You struggle to find a balance between your home life and the independence that you have grown to love.

2. Reuniting with hometown friends

Reuniting with some of your hometown friends is not everything you hoped it would be. Although you still consider many of your friends back home your best friends, you seem to have grown apart from them without even realizing it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is not what you are used to when you think of the word “home”. You will always cherish the time that you have with your hometown friends, but you also find yourself wishing you could spend time with your new-found college friends.

3. You miss your college friends.

Hanging out with your hometown friends has made you realize how much you miss all of your friends from school. You made a ton of amazing friends while living on campus, and not being able to see them every day like you have become used to is a downright struggle. You cannot wait to be able to update them on every detail of your life again, and you are wishing that time could come sooner rather than later.

4. You miss learning.

Of course, you don’t miss waking up for class every day, but you feel like your life is slowly wasting away while you sit at home acquiring no new information. On a college campus, everything is so new and there are so many opportunities to learn something new every day. At home, you are surrounded by information you have known your whole life and it is becoming more and more tedious as time goes on.

5. You miss college.

It is settled, you miss your school. Being home for a few weeks was great and all, but you are ready to get back to your new life. You want to get back in the swing of things, which seems impossible when living back at home. Everything is so familiar back at home, and you are more than ready to start experiencing new and exciting days again.

Moving back home after a year on a college campus is not what you expected. Even though you appreciate your hometown for what it is, you have a huge love for the college you picked to call your new home. Wanting to go back to your college campus proves that you have picked the right school to be at, and somehow that makes up for how much you miss your new-found “home.”