College Housing

To dorm or not to dorm, that is the question. After making the tough decision of which school to attend for your higher education, then comes that of where to live. Luckily for me, that decision was automatically made for me as I began college during the height of the pandemic. Yet, fast forward two years and I still live comfortably at home. Even with an hour commute each day, being able to come back home to family makes it worth it.

When you live at home (especially in the cold mid-west), it's nice to walk into an already warmed house that smells like whatever delicious food your mom made for the day. And as you share the delicious meal with your family, you get to tell someone about the highs and lows, funny and not-so-funny events that became part of your day. And this goes without saying but, if feasible, staying at home is one of the best financial decisions a person can make during their college days. With all those months you spent not paying rent, as your graduation day creeps up, you can be ready to start surfing Zillow to see what house you want to buy. So in a nutshell, living at home is the way to go. However, that is not how I used to see it.

As, a senior in high school going through the college application, I kept dreaming of how life would be if I moved out. I saw college as an opportunity to get out and live independently. I thought of it as a new token of freedom that I could collect for myself. However, now looking back at it given the experiences I have heard from friends and classmates who live alone, it's not all as glamorous and liberating as I had envisioned. It sounds stressful. But I’ll leave that story to be told by someone who has first-hand experience in that department…