The struggles of moving out of your dorm and back home for the summer

It is late August and you have started packing up all of your belongings and saying goodbye to friends and family wondering “how am I supposed to leave and live at college”? Fast forward eight months of all-nighters in the library, parties, late-night pizza deliveries, and study groups with your friends and you are wondering “how am I supposed to leave and move back home”?

Let’s face it, living away at college can be hard. Especially if it is your first time on your own, it takes some time to adjust to your new surroundings. Living in a college dorm is a learning experience in itself— living in a small room with several people, sharing a bathroom and shower with those in your hallway, and learning to cook and do laundry on your own may honestly take some getting used to. However once you have found your place, you and your roommates catch yourselves calling your dorm ‘home’ by the end of the year.

As summer approaches and it is time to pack up everything in your dorm room, the real struggle begins. You wonder how you could possibly be returning home with more items than you left with, and how you are going to fit everything into your parents car when they come to move you out. If you think finding a place in your tiny college dorm room for all of your belongings is tough, try finding a place for it all once you have unpacked at home and do not know where to put that common room rug or futon you and your roommates had bought for the room. After winning that “rock, paper, scissors” game on who gets to take the futon home, you wish you had picked rock instead of paper.

Now that most of your suitcases have been unpacked and the shower caddy and side table have been tucked away in the attack, enjoying three months of no research papers and group projects is all that is on your mind. At school, no homework meant hanging out with friends from down the hall or spending some time catching up on that Netflix show. With summer jobs and semesters ending at different times, it may not be as easy to gather your old group of friends around at the same time at home. The freedom to binge watch an entire Netflix series may have to wait until you part ways with your summer employer for the summer, and plans with friends have to be made in advance and are not as simple anymore as knocking on someone in your halls door.

After that last box that has been sitting on the floor of your room has been put away, you finally set a date to see that old high school friend, and you think, “I’m finally settled in!” it is already August and it is time to move back into your beloved college dorm.