Home for the holidays as a freshman

There is a lot of hype over coming home for the first time as a freshman.

Some come back from across the country, excited to finally sleep in their own bed after traveling on two planes, two busses and an Uber.

Some just have a quick (or not so quick due to obscene amounts of traffic) trip down the 10, but no matter where you’re coming from, returning home after three months of college is a little jarring.

Let’s start with the family. While we all like to believe we are full-fledged adults now — that we can come home as late as we please and whip up our own gourmet dinners of cinnamon toast crunch — when we really face the facts we are still just teenagers.

For many of us, our parents still make our dentist appointments for us and no matter how hard we protest, when we come home from college all of the same old rules that we thought we had bid farewell to will apply.

“Text when you leave the house, text when you get to your final destination, text when you’re safe in bed, text the name of every single person you interact with in the next two hours, might as well throw in 17 more texts to let me know you’re still safe in the three mile radius you’ve traveled tonight. Oh, but don’t text while you’re driving … it’s dangerous.”

So we’ve clearly established that all our new, beautiful collegiate freedoms have been ripped away from us. We’re left standing on the street corner, empty-handed — no car, waiting for an Uber to take you to the mall as you text your mom that yes, you are still indeed safe from the last time she asked, approximately 13 minutes ago.

However, the real hype around coming home is seeing your friends, your classmates, having that awkward high school “reunion,” if you can even call it that after only three months apart.

At the inevitable reunion there are the blatantly awkward people who have always been awkward, clinging to their phones in a corner pretending to be engaged in some text while suspiciously looking up every few seconds to see who’s around.

There are the people who are “too cool” now that they’re in college. They come to the party, but then they walk around judging the music and social interactions because yes, frat parties are so much more mature.

There are the people who are way too into it, having consumed far too much alcohol for a high school “reunion,” greeting people a little too loudly and bear hugging everyone they see.

And then there’s you, having a conversation with someone you never thought you’d see again, already having run into two ex-boyfriends, and having asked the question, “How’s college?” approximately 14 times.

It’s been 20 minutes and all you want to do is leave, but leaving will make you seem obnoxious and high maintenance, and you keep hoping the night will somehow turn out to be great.

So coming home is not looking too hot. Between the awkward run-ins with exes and overbearing parents, you’re ready to go back to school, but I think even with all of this there is something comforting in the craziness of home.

When you go away to college, people make it seem like life as you know it is over. While day-to-day life is definitely different, coming home makes you realize that’s not true at all.

You come home and you realize it’s all still there — the best friends, the crazy parents, the high school drama.

Perhaps the only reason it may be weird is because you are able to look at the situation differently, with a new perspective.