Summer After College

Summer after being in college is a lot different than summer after being in high school. Here's why:

You'll most likely spend your entire summer working to save up for the school year.

That's what I'm doing, and so are the majority of my friends. I work 40+ hours per week, so I don't have a lot of free time! I have to concentrate on having grocery, gas, and car insurance money, along with miscellaneous expenses that I may have during the upcoming school year. Once you're in college, you don't really get to enjoy summer like you have in previous years. I had a lot of big plans with my best friend for summer, and we haven't done any of them just because I have to work so much.

There's a lot of pressure to spend time with family.

Since I've been living three hours away from my family, they want to see me as much as possible while I'm home. That's really nice and of course I want to see them too, but it gets hard to split time between them, my friends, and my boyfriend -- along with working all the time.

You miss school SO MUCH.

That's right, you miss school. I miss Bloomington and IU SO SO SO MUCH. And that's kind of funny to me because I didn't think that I would miss it that badly. I'm so excited to move back! My best friend is transferring this semester, so we're living together in Union Street Center (an on-campus apartment complex) with two other roommates who seem super nice! I'm excited to have all of my friends back in one place and to regain the freedom of doing whatever I want to do. Which brings me to the next point...

As a college student who lives on campus, you grow accustomed to making your own decisions and doing whatever you want.

You can't do this at home. If you're living under your parents roof, you have to follow their rules. My parents aren't really strict or anything, but being told to do chores or to do this and not do that, etc., is something that I didn't have to listen to for months and months. So that can be a bit challenging as well.

These are the main things that are different for me between this summer and previous summers. Being home is great, but I miss IU so much now. I miss literally everything about it: Kirkwood, Mother Bear's, the SRSC, my college friends that don't live in my hometown, classes (yeah that's right), my favorite professor, even the stupid train that blares it's horn loud as hell at 3 AM every night. I cannot wait to get back to all of that, but I'm making this summer as great as I can while I wait for August to come around. Here's a look at my summer so far, and hopefully I'll be writing for you guys again soon. (: