Every time I leave home, I do it quickly. Freshman year, I made a list of the things I needed to take with me. Sophomore year, I quickly forgot about the clothes, the house, the people, and the memories that I would be leaving behind. It’s been poeticized many times before: don’t think that what’s behind you is better than what’s in front because it’s not. Your eyes face front for a reason.
I’m a junior now, but I still remember. The first time I left home, I saw an overwhelming pile of dirty laundry and an empty closet. I saw my legs clad in the same pair of jeans for a disgusting number of days, until finally I saw washing machines and dryers and detergent at some obscure hour early Tuesday morning. The second time I left home, I saw a stack of dirty dishes and piles of Lean Cuisine in the freezer. This was the time I learned that if you leave your trash in the freezer, a) some annoyed housemate will always dispose of your trash for you, and b) your trash technically will never stink up the room. This was also the time I learned it was impossible to sustain nutritional balance on a diet consisting solely of Lean Cuisine, ramen, and the occasional hot dog. However, there is a silver lining – two lessons can be derived from such malnutrition:
Lesson 1: Appreciate student meal plans. HUDS is rough sometimes, but you can (at the very least) always rely on the grill for your protein, the salad bar for your greens, and the vanilla coffee to get you through your day. For any extraneous foods you crave for substantiation (or, you know, to actually please your taste buds), you have the lovely shops and restaurants in the Square. Which is very much within walking distance, and thus might make you feel less guilty about the curly fries you bought at Quincy Grille and the entire tub of ice cream from Dunkin Donuts that you plan on consuming in the basement of Lamont Library.
Lesson 2: Take care of yourself. Physically, take care of yourself. Please. Because your parents aren’t there to do it for you anymore, and no one will be there to tell you to exercise or to eat your veggies or clean your room. But as great as those curly fries and cookies-and-cream ice cream are, they really aren’t worth the Freshman Fifteen and being unable to fit into any pair of jeans that you own; it’s great having the freedom to control your diet, but not being able to fit into pants in the midst of a rough New England winter is most definitely not worth it.
That may or may not be advice that stemmed from personal experience.
Basically, while you’ve been learning how to be a good student your entire life, you haven’t really been learning how to be a person. And when you’re on your own (cue Les Mis soundtrack), the latter becomes a priority – you won’t be able to drag yourself into class to be that good student if a) you can’t find pants, b) you can’t find pants that fit, or c) you’re not wearing pants at all. But now comes the big existentialist, metaphorical question: would you take the initiative to not only look for, but to put on a pair of pants that hug every curve and show off every asset that you possess?
This is Lesson 3: You are the priority. It’s so easy to confuse living on your own with living alone; because the latter obviously isn’t true (shoutout to my wonderful roommate), it’s even more easy to put the wellbeing of said roommate before your own. It may be out of love, out of a desire to maintain the peace, or to avoid confrontation, but your needs should be the most important to you. You can only help your roommate shop for pants once you put some on yourself.
Lesson 4: Manage your time. The same way your parents won’t be there to tell you what to eat anymore, they also won’t be there to control how you spend your time. You won’t receive their harsh, judgmental looks every time you log onto your personal laptop and stare at Facebook until your heart bleeds with the belief that all of your friends are having a better time without you, which basically means that you’ll continue to stare at Facebook as your soul enters the abyss that is FOMO as well. Adjusting to living on your own isn’t limited to the logistics of living, it’s even more about knowing how to be alone.
Sometimes you walk around in circles. You know the location of your final destination, but you have no idea what you need to do to get there. You have friends (sometimes) who might accompany you, parents (occasionally) who might surprise you with a FaceTime call or actual face-to-face visit, advisors (often) who try and make you feel better about the choices that you made while you were doing this whole “adjusting-to-living-on-your-own” thing. But at the end of the day, it’s all you – it’s all about you, and it’s up to you to take care of every aspect of your life.
Lesson 5: Adjusting to living on your own begins with loving who you are and what your life has turned out to be.
Third time’s a charm.