The College Transition and the Summer After

I just completed my first year in college and have recently come back home for the summer. As I sit and watch my younger siblings chase each other in circles for the TV remote I find myself wondering why I missed them so much to begin with. As my father knocks on my door yet again asking when I’m going to cut the grass, I find myself wondering how I could have felt the need to call him every few days while I was away. And my mother… well, our relationship didn’t change much when I went away; there’s still lots of talking, lots of scolding, and lots of laughs. I also find myself wondering how I ever could have been annoyed that this school friend chews too loud, or that one can’t tell Glee from Grey’s Anatomy (a very important distinction, I might add).

I’m experiencing what I like to call “the summer after syndrome”. There is no doubt that the transition from home life to one’s first year in college is tough. I experienced all the homesickness, insecurity, and general adaptation suffering. But what I didn’t expect as the year drew to a close and took a deep breath was the fact that I didn’t particularly want to go home.

Paul Armstrong, a college student finishing his first year, was interviewed by Collegebound.net about returning home. In the published article (found in full here: http://www.collegebound.net/content/article/going-away-to-college-is-it-for-you/228/), Paul comments that “You’ve become really close to your [school] friends — you all went through the same things right there in the trenches. Going home for the first time after going away to college is a big shock.”

But it’s more than a shock. It’s basically reversing your adjustment to college: from living on your own, holding to your own schedule, and letting the laundry pile up to sharing a house with others, following the schedule of whoever controls the car keys, and being forced to do chores once again. The people you’ve learned to live without, whether those people are parents or siblings or your crazy uncle Louie, are once again major players in your life. You’re finding time to spend with friends who may not still be the people you remember and your little brother (who most likely shot up by a yard or eight while you were gone) is spending less time tossing a ball around with you and more time swapping questionable amounts of bodily fluids with some girl.

So what can you do to help with this syndrome? Well, the easiest thing is to treat coming home for the summer just like you treated going away to college in the first place. You had to adjust to sharing a space with a roommate, to eating at different hours, and to finding things to do on campus. Now you’ll have to learn to keep your stuff to yourself at home, eat with the family (if your family does; mine does and I find it’s the best way to stay connected with them), and find places to go to have fun during the summer. If you’re cringing at the prospect of going through a rough transition every time you switch abodes, don’t worry. It will be significantly easier to fall back into one routine or the other than it was to create either of them.

Some things you should take into account:

• Your parents and siblings have gotten used to living with one less person to clean up after, cook for, and fight with over the bathroom. It will be just as much as an adjustment period for those already at home as it is for you. For  a smooth transition, talk about what your parents expect of your when you’re home and just generally try to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes.
• You most likely can’t stick to the same hours that you did at college. Wild partying at 3AM will most likely be frowned upon, as will sneaking in the window at 3AM after wild partying at 2AM. Just saying.
• You don’t have to try and revert to the person you were. If you’ve changed at college, you don’t have to try and be the person you were once you get back home. If you’ve lost your yearning to attempt every stupid stunt in the book, don’t feel pressured when you get home and all your old friends still want to go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Friends come and go, and if they don’t like you for who you’ve become then they aren’t worth hanging around.
• Give yourself something productive to do. To avoid getting into too much trouble, give yourself something involved to do. This could be reading that stack of books you’ve been unable to get to or volunteering or getting a job. Something to keep you off the streets and out of your parent’s hair (and out of range of their chore radar) will suffice.
• Enjoy your summer! What good is summer if you can’t enjoy it? Have some fun!

What do you find helps you get through the summer after adjustments?

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