Thursday, September 25, 2008

Transition From Home To Residence


They say that the years you spend at college are the greatest years of your life. Are they really? We move away from our homes, our families, friends, high school sweethearts; we move away from all that is familiar to us. How are we expected to adjust when everything changes? We arrive at college, not a soul we know in sight, some of us heart broken and terrified of failure. We are thrown into a pool feet first without even testing the water, and there is no turning back. I never once thought that moving away from home would be difficult for me because I have always been very independent. Although, I have had a few set backs and have found the transition from home to residence quite challenging. When I left Burlington at the end of summer, my whole world was flipped upside down. Even though I am still spinning, my stomach is beginning to settle. I may still be afraid to fail, but I have already let myself fall. I have fallen in love with my room mates. This may make me sound weak, but I feel that they are the ones that have kept me going. I have them to thank for making it through this transition. It has been a very bumpy road so far but I believe that they are the answer. All over campus you will come across ‘ways to survive residence!’ They all say the same things: sleep, eat right, don’t drink too much, study, etc. All of these things are helpful, but they are not going to get you out of bed each morning. They aren’t going to hold you when you can’t lift yourself off of the floor. So much has changed in my life since I arrived here and I feel that I wouldn’t be holding up as well as I am now if I didn’t have such great room mates. I believe that friendship and support are key elements of making it through the transition from home to residence. I would like to thank my room mates for making me smile, when I never thought I would. 

2 comments:

_meagan_ said...

I think you were bang on with this and I agree that the cliched ways to survive your first year of college are overrated and unrealistic. We can't eat right all the time because we don't have our mother's cooking, and we're super busy, of course everyone is going to drink, and because of a combination of the first two things, a good night's sleep is rare.
I think you spoke for the majority of people here- even if they are scared to admit it - we've all felt a little homesick at some point, and even though we don't have our old friends and family, our roommates ARE the closest thing to sisters/brothers there is. =]

Dre said...

I think the best years of our lives can't be college, because it's when the majority of teenage stress sets in. We have to meet new people, meet new teachers, LIVE WITH STRANGERS; I mean, how often does a room with 6 strangers coincidently like each other? There is also the challenge of keeping yourself afloat financially. Most of the teachers we speak to tell us that having a job while in college is very difficult and should be avoided. Some teachers will even go as far as saying that you cannot have a job while enlisted in their course. I can understand where they coming from, but c'mon, how else can we afford 3000 in tuition, 5000 in residence cost, groceries, textbooks, etc. I would have to say, in closing, that high school had to have been the great years. Money wasn't as big of an object, and we knew all of our friends.