Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan: Realizing that you can go home again

It's a pretty safe bet that we're not the same people we were when we first got to college.

This is totally natural, of course, and it's not as if we morph into completely different beings between freshman orientation parties and Senior Week. But all this education, this independence, these four years of college development have most likely combined to make us a little wiser and more worldly than we were at the outset. C'est la vie.

Growing up is great and all, but far from simple; even as you move on down that proverbial road of life, you never quite escape your origins. You're going to have to face it sometime, and what happens when the new, mature you gets thrown back into the environment of the na‹ve-and-inexperienced you? What happens when the world of who you are now collides with the world of who you once were?

In short, what happens when you go home?

It's a question most of us have to deal with, whether it be a quick Thanksgiving jaunt to the hometown or a summer of shacking up in our high school bedrooms. Increasingly, though, it's a long-term phenomenon -- maybe it's the crappy economy, maybe it's the allure of a rent-free existence, but more and more college graduates are ending up right back where they started.

Most do it rather reluctantly. Ask one of them what her plans are for after graduation, and she'll avert her eyes and tell you she's heading home for a while. "But only until I save up for an apartment," she'll be quick to add. You can't blame her -- even as living at home grows more common for twenty-somethings, it's still not exactly cool to be cohabiting with the 'rents.

It's strange to unpack your bags in your old room once again (that is, if it hasn't been given to your younger sister or converted into a showroom for dolls) because of all that has changed. Your days of doing your own thing are colliding with the family life of yesterday, and you're not sure just where you belong.

You feel like you've figured out how to take care of yourself just fine, thank you. You feel like you should be living that glamorous, young, professional life you earned with four years of study sessions and term papers. You feel like a real adult, the kind that goes out for happy hour cocktails and orders Chinese for dinner six nights a week and stays out 'til the wee hours on work nights just because you're the boss and you can, dammit!

A lot of us aren't quite there yet.

Despite our degrees, we're not totally independent. We've got entry-level jobs (if we have jobs at all), we've got student loan creditors salivating at the end of that all-too-brief grace period, and we hate to admit we still don't know how to buy health insurance now that Dad's plan doesn't cover us. It's a rude awakening for the starry-eyed graduate to realize that not only does he lack the perfect job and high-class life of his undergrad dreams, he can't even afford gas for the family car, let alone his own rent.

This sort of thing often leads to melancholic ponderings of the "Where am I going? What does it all mean?" variety, … la Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. And on top of this post-adolescent angst, we've got to remember how it was back when we weren't the masters of our own destinies, when we weren't free to do whatever we wanted.

Now, we can't have those rowdy drunken gatherings in the living room because we'll wake Mom and Dad, and we can't monopolize the TV or the car when our younger siblings want to use it, and we have to do the dishes on a regular schedule. We've been allowed to be selfish in school, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for personal growth -- but back on the home front, we've got to unlearn the "me-me-me" attitude.

And as weird as it is for us to go back home, I imagine it must be weird for our parents as well. Sure, they love us, and we're always welcome ... but haven't they gotten used to the empty nest just as much as we've gotten used to our college lives? It's an adjustment on all sides, after all, when their little bird comes fluttering back for a while.

So forgive us, please, if we're difficult or inconsiderate or complain constantly about how much we hate it at home. We love home, we love you, and we love the independence we've developed in college, too. We're just trying to figure out how it all fits together until we can truly support ourselves.

We won't stay forever. Until then, thanks for the free rent.

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a senior communications major from Wheaton, Ill. Six Feet One appears on Tuesdays.

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