This summer, I transitioned from living in a college dorm to an off-campus house. As exciting as it was, it was also an extremely difficult transition for me. Unlike some other students on campus who are within a short distance from home where they can go home as they please, I’m about 3 hours away from my family house. That means that I have to be actively planning with my family when I can and cannot come home to see them since I am heavily invovled on campus, causing my schedule to fill up months in advance.
With the move to my college house, I’ve faced several challenges. The largest was getting used to not being in a building with a ton of people. For a short period of the summer, I was the only one that was living in my college house since my roommates were still primarily living at their families’ houses, give or take a few days. At my family home, I’m one of five people that are actively living in the house so it’s very rare that I’m home alone, especially at night. When I was in a dorm, there were a ton of other people living in the building with me so even if my roommate was not there during the day, or at night, there were still plenty of people surrounding me.
This led me to feel a sense of security. There’s something very comforting for me when I’m not the only one in a house. The more people, the better. That caused it to be difficult for me to be at the college house by myself, especially at night. Luckily, my boyfriend was very supportive and would come over at night when it caused me too much discomfort.
Along the same vein, I’ve also rarely had to buy food for myself to cook meals every day multiple times a day. Obviously, as a junior in college, I’ve dabbled a bit in cooking and done a bit of grocery shopping in my day, but it’s a huge change to go from having a microwave in the dorm to a full kitchen and no dining hall. It became quickly apparent to me that the classic meal of Mac ‘n Cheese and chicken nuggets was not sufficient for every meal, every day. I was completely clueless for the first month about what to eat, and I still kind of am. Aldi has been my best friend with easy to prep meals and prepackaged salads. Having a constant supply of free food on campus is a hard habit to get out of, but progress is being made every day.
Missing home was the biggest difficulty for me. Even the past two summers with me coming back and forth from school, I’ve never spent a summer away from my family. We’ve always been together, even if most of us were working. It was a great time of sleeping in and being together, which I missed out on for part of this summer. I was grateful for the time that I did get with them at the beginning of the summer, but it was hard being by myself for pretty much the second half of summer. I was constantly checking in with family members to see what I was missing because it hurt a lot to not be with all of them. However, that did also allow me to visit my family’s home more and it made it more special to me. There were more mini vacations throughout the summer that made up for the lack of family time that I was craving. I also learned the importance of Facetiming my sisters while we watch the same show and have never known frustration like my sisters starting an episode two-seconds after me.
Despite all the difficulties, I do really love living off-campus, even with the longer walk to classes. It took a few months to get used to it. Sometimes there are days that are harder than others, but overall it’s worth doing if you have the chance. Nothing beats coming home to your own room at college surrounded by your college friends.