It's coming! And I know we're all looking forward to it. But going home still requires some adjustment.
Here are the 10 stages of going home.
1. Stuffing your face with home cooked meals.
There’s nothing quite like coming home to a real meal cooked by your mom. Surprisingly, Chik-Fil-A every day for months gets old and let’s be honest, no matter how much you say you’re going to cook your own meals, you rarely do. The minute you get home you storm the pantry and the refrigerator feeling like you’ve discovered heaven. Until college, you take for granted all of the meals your mom or dad made especially for you.
2. Sleeping in your own bed.
The mattresses at school are arguably equivalent to sleeping on a wooden table. You can forget the Tempurpedic mattress that you’re accustomed to and you have to get a
5-inch mattress pad just to mask the discomfort. There is no better feeling than crawling into your warm bed at home after traveling home and you never realized just how much you missed it until you two are reunited.
3. Watching T.V. for 12 hours straight.
What else are you supposed to do other than catch up on all of your T.V. shows when you have absolutely zero obligations for several days or even weeks. It’s so satisfying to be a full-blown couch potato for a few days because you definitely deserve it after a tough semester. Now, after a couple days of this you start to feel like a little bit of a degenerate while your parents are off at work and your siblings are at school all day, but someone has to hold down the fort, right?
4. Realizing how grateful you are for your parents
No matter how much you argued with your parents in high school, when you come home you realize how much they really do for you. You don’t think twice about letting your mom do your laundry or wait on you hand and foot like she used to in high school. While you were at school you realized that you don’t know nearly as much as you thought you did about taking care of yourself, so it’s always nice to be able to come home and pretend you’re a little kid again.
5. Making the rounds of visits.
While you were off at school you left so many people behind and they’re all expecting you to come back and visit. Whether it’s your old sports teams or family friends you’re excited to go back and share all of your crazy stories from college. Your best friends are definitely the people you’re actually most excited to see though, and you feel like you have to spend every day together just to catch up on the last three months of your lives.
6. Answering the same 5 questions from every adult you run into.
You can’t go home without hearing the questions, “Are you loving school??” or “Do you have a boyfriend?” Every adult you run into is probably going to ask you the same questions they did the last time you were home. By now you’ve probably created a spiel that you use every time these conversations arise. And if you keep talking, they’ll start to ask what your major is and what you want to do when you graduate. Little do they know, you’re just trying to make it out of every week without having a mental breakdown.
7. Showing up at one of your high school’s events.
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Showing up to one of your high school’s sporting events is so bittersweet at first; you feel like a big shot because you’re on to bigger and better things, but at the same time you start to reminisce and wish that was you again. After enough visits home though, you realize that you are now just washed up. And you know you’re getting old because you don’t even know anyone at your Thanksgiving football game.
8. Begging your mom to take you shopping.
Since you’re inevitably broke, you know that this is your one time to finally go shopping in hopes that your mom will buy you new clothes. You realized early on in the semester that all that money you thought you saved up over the summer didn’t last you as long as you thought. You know you’re in college when you are so quick to waste your money on fast food yet you really question yourself on that $20 shirt.
9. Doctor’s visits, haircuts, etc.
Coming home for break means you have to cram months worth of appointments into such a short time. You get to go to your regular hair stylist and have her fix that one really bad haircut you tried to get at school. But you also always seem to have to go back to the dentist, get your flu shot and get the oil changed in your car. Just when you thought break as going to be relaxing, you actually have so much to catch up on.
10. Realizing you miss school and that it’s time to go back.
There is a reason that breaks are short. Coming home is always fun, but after enough time you realize how much fun you have at school. Soon enough you will probably start arguing with your siblings and realizing that you can’t come and go as you please, just like high school all over again. It’s always a good time back home but you can’t wait to get back to college. You just wish you didn’t have two tests and a paper next week.
