We’ve All Been There: Home for the Summer

By Lauren

The car has been packed, your roommates have been hugged and you’re only a short car ride away from a summer at home. Your parents try and talk strike up conversation on the way (“So, honey, how did that last exam go?”), but you just want to sit in the backseat and flip through your pictures from the last week in silence.

Too bad looking at the camera makes you want to barf. So you shut your eyes and lay your head on the clothes piled up next to you and go to sleep.

Soon you are back in your childhood bedroom. It’s weird climbing back into that twin (non extra long) bed and staring at pictures of your high school friends you haven’t talked to in months adorning the walls. It’s weird not having to use a key to unlock the bathroom down the hall. Hell, it’s weird to pee alone. Being home is just weird.

All you want to do it lay down and relax – the last week of studying and partying has taken its toll on you – but the moment you do, you hear an all-too-familiar call.

“Honey! Babe! Are you going to start unpacking these boxes?!”

And so it begins: being back home with the parents.

The nagging starts with the unpacking and quickly moves into cleaning up after yourself, doing your laundry, putting your laundry away, cleaning your room so the maid can get in there, putting your dishes in the dishwasher, taking out the garbage, etc.

When the parentals aren’t asking telling you what to do, they are asking questions:

“Where you goin?”
“Who you goin’ with?”
“What time are you going to be home?”
“Who is driving?”
“When are you going to start looking for a summer job?”
“Are you this messy in your dorm room?”
“How did your roommate deal with you listening to that music so loud all the time?”

You try catching up on all the sleep you lost for the past 8 months, but it seems sleeping past 9am on a Saturday is unheard of at home. You try calling your friends to catch up (and commiserate), but someone is always nearby, listening in. And even you know that spending a day in your PJs with a tub of Edy’s Loaded in your lap is pathetic when there aren’t 3 other girls digging in with you.

You love the family – really, you do – but coming home is hard after doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, for a year. You appreciate all the free meals (that aren’t cafeteria slop) and the family time in front of the TV, but living under your parents’ roof and rules is not easy.

Pretty soon (less than a week, for most) you’re planning summer road trips with your college friends and counting down the days until you can return to school once more.

Oh, honey – we’ve all been there. Who woulda thunk that college students would look forward to the school year and shun the summer breaks?