With move-in just days away, I started reflecting on this past summer. Even though freshman year was the most frustrating year of my life, it was also the best. Without further ado, here's the seven hardest things about NOT being at UConn.
1) Your friends are more than a 5-minute walk from your bed.
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At UConn, unless you’re walking from Busby to South, your friends are no more than a five-minute walk from you. You want to grab lunch with someone from home? If you live in a small town, like I do, planning a lunch takes at least thirty minutes due to the length of a drive to what may be considered a good restaurant. You can’t just knock on someone’s door, or catch up on your favorite TV shows with your roommate. These things that seem so simple on campus, are a process at home.
2) Food isn’t available at all hours of the day, or for free.
Let’s be real, your dining plan is your life during the school year. You can swipe into as many dining halls you want whenever you want and eat as much as you want. When you don’t feel like eating anything there, you can use your points to get food from the U or any of the cafés on campus, and if you don’t feel like eating where ever you are, there’s always grab and go. If all of those things aren’t open, you can rely on DP Dough, Wings Over or Insomnia to deliver you whatever you might be craving. When you’re not at school though, all of those things cost real money, and you would be surprised at how fast that adds up.
3) Your parents don’t understand that giving up complete freedom is hard.
I might be the only one who experienced this, but coming from a strict family college was a bit of a culture shock for me. First semester I stayed out until 2 am, just because I could, and had sleepovers on week nights again, just because I could. Coming home to a curfew and rules was hard for me, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who experienced this. I came home to my parents treating me as if I was still the four-year-old girl who had just come home from her first day of school. Parents have just as hard of a time with us leaving home as we do leaving our dorms, and no matter how much they baby us, it’s only because they care.
4) Your “friends from home” aren’t the same people they were last summer.
After you graduate, your friends are filled with wishes of hanging out during the summer, and you get closer than ever, but when you arrive home and try to do those same things, nothing is the same. There are suddenly awkward silences between the two of you that there never was before, and you find yourselves competing to win the nonexistent competition of who had the better freshman year. You have both made other friends, and your stories don’t make sense because they don’t know the people you’re talking about. With some people, it may seem like any connection you may have had is gone.
5) You can’t watch the sunset from Horsebarn Hill.
There’s no sight on campus that is the same as the view from the top of Horsebarn Hill. In any normal place, there is no sight better than a sunrise (but who wants to wake up even earlier than an 8 am) and a sunset. Put the two together, and you get the most breath-taking view of a lifetime. While a sunset is also gorgeous from the beach, it cannot compare to that from Horsebarn Hill.
6) Restaurants not located on a college campus are confused if you sit down with an open textbook and a highlighter.
While taking an online summer class, I ran into my first experience with restaurants not being accepting of you taking up tables and spending little to no money just to get homework done. One of the most relieving moments of the summer thus far was the day I walked into Starbucks on campus and just sat down and read a book, with no judgment and other people around doing the same thing as you. In the same regard, there is no Homer Babbidge to pretend to do work in, or a Student Union for last minute cramming before your exam in Laurel 102.
7) You don’t actually get a break because you’re working to pay for your education.
Two words: fee bill. As we all know, and struggle to pay every semester, the fall fee bill is due on August 1st. $13,000 is a lot to make in one summer, but you don’t want to take it all out in loans either. Working 40 hour weeks is hard, and not being able to take an actual break is worse, but when you graduate, you’ll be glad your past self worked in order to pay your bill on your own.
Being at UConn is hard, due to the studying, the mental breakdowns, and the tears that accompany it. But UConn is also the most magical place in the world, outside of Disney. From the hustle and bustle of students trying to get to class, the smell of the Student Union, to eating lunch with your friends on the green. UConn is where your memories are made, lifelong friendships are formed, and you discover who you truly are.
