Coming home from college in the summer usually involves a plethora of mixed emotions. Happy that finals are over, sad that you're leaving your friends, excited to eat your mother's cooking. All semblance of a routine goes up in the air. When you have no routine, stages emerge, with varying degrees of productivity, characterized by sleeping, eating, and waiting until you have a schedule to follow again.

Stage 1: Sleeping in until noon

This is usually when college students are catching up on the minimal hours of sleep they received during the semester. One problem is that you're not physically used to going to bed earlier; so instead you compensate and stay up until 2am watching Netflix and then sleeping in. All of your high school friends are still going through finals, and your college friends are all back in their hometowns or are on vacation. Therefore, the only thing to do is binge watch Grey's Anatomyor The Office and make yourself a microwave meal.

Stage 2: Getting out of bed

By now you can feel your parents getting slightly frustrated at your laziness, and you're starting to get bored just sitting in your house all day. So you get out of bed, maybe go work out or go to Target, or the library or Starbucks. Maybe you go back to your high school and visit your teachers or go to a band concert. Just something to do instead of sitting inside on your computer. You start to feel remorse for wasting your days away but also feel the pull to stay in just stay in bed.

Stage 3: Realizing you have things to get done

Job applications, career research, planning for the next semester, teaching yourself Organic Chemistry to get a head start. Shopping for your off-campus apartment, starting work, et cetera. Making a plan to work out or run every day, maybe try to read more. You perhaps procrastinate more and watch more TV, but then you get back on track.

Stage 4: Following a schedule again

You start work and finally have a schedule again! Then, you realize you wish you had more free time. Free time is something everyone takes for granted when you have it. Pretty soon, however, college will start again and you will have to go back to seemingly endless studying. It seems that whenever you're at college you miss home, and whenever you're home you miss college. If you try, however, you can find the right balance.