Comforts of home must be foregone

When I started at USC last year, I was a little overwhelmed. USC offers such a variety of new choices and responsibilities that I felt anxious nearly all the time.

Esther Cheong | Daily Trojan

With my home just a 40-minute drive down the 110 Freeway, I started driving home almost every weekend.

The familiarity of home and its proximity to campus proved irresistible when compared to the new pressures of college life.

At first, I provided excuses for my absences — I needed to get something I had forgotten at home, I wanted to see some friends before they left for college — but as the semester wore on it became habit.

Never did I stop to question the reason for my weekly migration, nor did I realize what I was missing out on. If I ever did doubt myself, I could look around and see countless fellow Angelenos doing the same exact thing. If anything, going home for free laundry, free food or a simple escape was convenient.

It was that same convenience, however, that made this pattern of behavior harmful.

College is supposed to prepare us for the rest of our lives in terms of our careers and social skills. Depending on a safety net only a short drive away sabotages that development.

The independence fostered by one’s college experience is vital. You can’t expect to be a high-functioning member of society if you have to run back home every other week to do laundry.

The convenience of saving some quarters should be weighed against the necessity of learning to do it yourself — one shrunken, discolored T-shirt at a time.

The collection of skills needed for everyday living must be refined through blundering on our own, like a baby learning to walk. Going home, although it might feel comfortable, only makes mastering these things more difficult.

A temporary reprieve from everything is understandable, but, again, it is a solution that only creates more problems. Never again will we only be surrounded by people with whom we share mutual growing experiences.

For the rest of our lives we will encounter people from every walk of life, and the sooner we can learn to deal with this reality, the better. Going to class with all these people will surely aid students in this regard, but interacting with other students during the only time they don’t have to be worrying about classes and responsibilities is more beneficial.

The security of home life must be foregone for the more complex life on campus. This does not mean, however, parents should be discarded upon arrival to college, forgotten as some sort of relic of our past lives.

Family is a very important part of everyone’s life and should not be lost in the interest of our personal progress.

Even though we set out to become our own people with our own lives, we must make sure that our family is there to enrich it.

Despite the allure of convenience and familiarity, those of us going to school near our homes must avoid falling into the trap of robbing ourselves of the full learning experience in front of us.

Daniel Grzywacz is a sophomore majoring in cinematic arts-critical studies. His column “Thoughts From the Quad” runs every Wednesday.