The stages of moving out on your own

The supposed best four years of your life usually begin with a rough start. We’ve all been there. The huge transition from the monotonous high school years and babying from your parents to the almost entirely independent and difficult college years can come as quite a shock to incoming freshmen. You are expected to live, cook (or eat the repetitive meals from the dining hall), and manage loads of work on your own as soon as you arrive on campus. Now, if that didn’t give you heart palpitations during your first semester, you deserve a medal.

There are certain stages most freshmen, sophomores, and even struggling juniors and seniors go through before they can say they made it:

The “why can’t I just stay home and do nothing with my life?” Stage

Pretending packing all this crap and being apart is something to smile about. #DoItForTheSelfie

Leaving your home may be one of the hardest experiences of your life. Will your parent turn your room into a gym or a designated knitting zone?  Why won’t they let me bring my bed? Will my dog forget who I am? All these questions will buzz through your head as you try to hold in the tears when you say goodbye to your parents. Not only are you saying bye to mom and dad, but you’re also saying goodbye to the luxury of procrastinating finding an outfit after showering for an hour while you play on your phone in your towel, the endless pantry of food that magically gets restocked each week, and the comfort of knowing the roads of your entire town by heart while Siri gently reminds you just in case you forget a turn.

This first stage is most definitely the hardest and it will probably take time to get out of the “moving out blues.”

The “wait, what do you mean I can’t bring my pet with me?’ Stage

MAX 🙁

Your dog/cat/lizard/fish/animal is your best friend, how does anyone expect you to leave them at home? What if they think you left them? Who is going to be excited every time you come home? Long-distance relationships with your pets are hard. The first few months will consist of nonstop FaceTiming their confused faces. You might even search for an overly loyal friend to substitute for your irreplaceable pet. Your social media accounts will have nonstop posts about your own pet or just cute animals in general to make up for your lack of furry cuddle buddies. Each call to your mom will include a quick bark or meow (or slither? What sounds do lizards even make?) to your beloved.

The ‘I’m going to hibernate for a couple decades… after I call my mom for three hours’ Stage

You hadn’t appreciated the beauty of unlimited minutes until now.

Once you’re done calling your mom for the fiftieth time that day asking how to use the stove and the laundry machine, it’s back to your binge-watching marathon of Breaking Bad. You develop a bond with your overly tall twin XL bed, and you’ll be damned if you have to get up for anything else other than lecture.

This is the stage where you feel like you don’t belong because making friends at a school that consists of 50,000 students quite intimidating. You’re not sure about your major, you hate your gen ed classes, and you’ve eaten lunchables for the past week while longingly thinking of your dad’s cooking. The quote “You don’t know what you got ’till it’s gone,” is playing repeatedly in your head while you scroll through Facebook reminiscing the good ‘ole days. You may have been uglier back then, but those were the days of stress-free happiness.

The ‘hm maybe I should get out of my dorm for once’ Stage

I guess this is an adequate second home.

Once you start to settle in and get comfortable with your workload and hopefully-not-too-early classes, you start to realize how huge the campus is and how little you’ve seen besides the tour you took during Preview. Maybe you start studying at the library, pretending to go to the gym and then ending up at Moe’s, and even start going on walks downtown to check out the very expensive, but superb eateries they have to offer.

This is also the stage for the sometimes successful attempts at social interaction. You realize that your roommates could actually be cool people despite your first judgements when you stalked them on social media before meeting them. You may even talk to fellow students in class and meet afterwards to go eat and talk about how much you hate/love/don’t care about the class. Your mom starts to check up on you because you have cut down your amount of daily calls to a just ten a day. Netflix starts wondering where you went. You’re making college your bitch.

The ‘I feel like I should get involved and do stuff with my life’ Stage

Clubs such as Phi Sigma Pi (shown above) will even let you pie people IN THE FACE.

Now that you have made some friends and know where all the best places to eat are, you start to research the colossal amount of clubs that UF has to offer. After going to a bunch of random meetings and hating all of them, you find a core group of clubs that you really want to get involved in. From clubs that have to do with your major to clubs that keep you sane after the craziness of homework and pretending that you know what the hell you’re doing with your life, getting involved becomes a big part of your time.

You start doing your dishes regularly and actually level up to occasionally making edible pasta to eat between your classes and club meetings. Your mom is now the one who calls you for updates and Netflix sends you constant emails notifying you on new shows to get you back to your binge-watching days. You can’t be fooled, the hibernation days are over (except for when you are feeling extra lazy and want to give up for a couple hours/days).

The ‘Mama I made it’ Stage

This is what professionalism looks like

Not only have you made connections in your clubs, but you are starting to get on the networking train to find potential internships and jobs. You are making two to three chef-like meals a week and you have managed to use the laundry machine more than once this month. You have forgotten all about that sullen freshman self that was intimidated by UF and being independent. Although you’re not the ‘big boss’ just yet, you are prepared and on the path to learning how to adult or at least fake maturity enough that people respect you as someone of high esteem while you secretly plan to build a blanket fort later.

Some students may get stuck in or return to the first and second stages for some time while others may, by some act of the Gator gods, find themselves on the throne of independence once they walk onto campus. The amount of time it takes to find your way through the process of making it on your own is solely up to you. It’s tough transitioning to this new world, but until you do, binge on, my friend, binge on.