<p>Can you tell them that your grades are starting to suffer because you’re coming home so often? Weekends are often the time that people get together and study or do projects or whatever. I come home on most weekends to work so I know how much time I lose. Just a thought :). </p>
<p>Best of luck to you- whatever happens!</p>
<p>They got older lol. The gap between my sister was 8 years so he grew tired of constantly running around and hoarding us at home. That happened during my freshman year. I would come home every other weekend and come back at 7 on a Sunday. After a new school change and a lot of compromises later, I have to call at around noon everyday unless i have class so they know i am fine. Besides that i do not come home unless vacation or for the summer. </p>
<p>Words of persuasion definitely help but as long as you keep showing them you are doing good they will be pleased. One thing i also did was be extremely annoying whenever i am home, so they look forward to sending me back.</p>
<p>I sent you a private message.</p>
<p>Good luck, and remember you have more power than you think if you look far ahead enough.</p>
<p>Could you get a job or internship -something they would respect- that was on weekends?
I am thinking if you have to stay for work they might let you. Maybe even start with babysitting on a Saturday night for a professor or family that your parents might respect. If you fill some hours of the weekend with something they can’t refuse, then it begins to make the drive less worthwhile and they start to ease up. Or find a religious services that you could attend? Again, baby steps.</p>
<p>Tell your parents that you learned that evil graduate admissions councils and top employers call your college and instructors to see how often you went home, because they think that if you go home too often, you won’t be successful in intensive research/employment programs.</p>
<p>^ Hey they’re not stupid. 
They have good jobs and are pretty well off.
Hah yeah I’m normally pleasant and considerate but not making much of an effort to be so when i’m at home. </p>
<p>I already have a job during the week and I’d like to keep weekends free. I think the group projects idea was really good because they do want me to do well in college (I need good grades to keep my scholarship). </p>
<p>Also, I’m taking a Ceramics class and we’re required to do at least 3-5 hours a week in the studio outside class. So I’m going to do this on Sunday so I can go back to college earlier</p>
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<p>Can you do it Saturday??? “Maybe” the ceramics studio isn’t open on Sunday? 
Or there’s this creepy guy who’s there on Sunday and you’d feel more comfortable being with all your friends in studio on Saturday? ;)</p>
<p>Perhaps tell them you need the time for studying but will still come home once a month?</p>
<p>As long as they’re paying for you, you’re on their leash…</p>
<p>^ Yes, as I pointed out in my first, they are chipping in for some of my college costs. But I don’t think that entitles them to dictate every aspect of my life - or does it? I guess you could argue “their money, their rules!” and I suppose that’s true.
Hmm now that you mention it, there was that creeper who kept harassing me so maybe I should go on Saturdays…:p</p>
<p>“One thing i also did was be extremely annoying whenever i am home, so they look forward to sending me back.”</p>
<p>That’s what I did when my mother insisted that I spend vacations with my very dysfunctional family. I was so annoying that she obviously was relieved when I didn’t come home for summer and spring vacation. Sometimes passive-aggressiveness is the only thing that will change overly controlling parents’ minds.</p>
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<p>Don’t make him out to be so creepy or harassing that they make you leave school or anything.</p>
<p>Lol good point axw.</p>
<p>My parents creepily harass me more than any random guy. For example, today my dad repeatedly asked me if I was coming home tonight. I was surprised because he knows I have classes on Friday, and a weekly quiz in calculus recitation and hw to hand it. He thought I would get off for Good Friday and could come home on Thursday…ugh, it is really hard putting up with them. They insist I come home the second my last class is over so I spend the bare minimum amount of time no campus that I can. </p>
<p>I’m already having trouble socially as it is because first semester I was working so much and living at home and made like one friend (who left to study abroad) and I really don’t have any close friends after almost 1 year of college. I’m so busy during the week and weekends are when I’m free.</p>
<p>Maybe ask for them to spend a weekend following you around on a typical weekend on campus (in their own hotel of course) and then arrange a very busy weekend schedule with studying in the library, barely lifting your head from your books/computer. Follow up with long sessions in the lab, the gym, ceramics studio, boring meals in places where there is no partying going on, and then off to religious services in the most traditional (in their eyes) setting you can locate. Introduce them to people they would approve of you befriending. Go to campus sponsored lectures, art exhibits, concerts, places where they would see that you are perfectly safe from whatever it is that they fear. Show them that you are being a “good girl” even when faced with all the corruption that lurks on a college campus. I bet you could create a cocoon for them to visualize you in and then work slowly to separate them from their attachment. Start asking to stay till noon on Saturday doing the things you have shown them that you want to do. Then till dinner, then over night, etc.</p>
<p>Even if their fears are irrational you don’t want to go it alone and I’m sure in the long run you don’t want to drive them out of your life. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>Oh, I love the lesbian idea! what a hoot that would be… for about a minute. You know you’d be on the first plane to the old country!</p>
<p>PS My first year of college I went home every weekend because I was afraid to go out in the city at night like my friends did. I had fun at home, but more on point…I ended up making friends in my classes and study groups. I found more friends through those routes than in the dorms. Believe me, not being there on weekends won’t stunt your college experience in the long run. It is just going to take more time for you because of your challenges. I urge you to continue working on your parents, in their own bizarre way they are showing you how much they love you and want to protect you. Don’t resist going home too much, it probably makes them think you are planning something!</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice mommaflamingo. I suggested it to my parents and they completely shut me down. 
The truth is, they want me to be unhappy. They don’t want me busy with friends and concerts and exhibits and whatnot; they want me at home, in my room, where they can control me. They know perfectly well that I’m a “good girl” but they’re just irrationally controlling. I’m home again this weekend (as usual) and I’ve had to babysit my little sister all day, which makes it impossible to get any work done even though I have a big exam this week which is 40% of my grade. I’m struggling to keep up in my classes, and I hate my job, and my social life sucks. My life has gone so downhill in the past year and it’s just depressing. Normally I’m not a whiner but I’ve been miserable for a long time now. </p>
<p>There is honestly just something weirdly sick about how controlling my dad is. In the long run, it’s going to get worse and I’ll have to cut them out of my life if I don’t want to go insane. They’re going to want me to keep living with them after I finish college. They’re expecting me to marry someone they pick, probably some creeper who shares their sketchy beliefs.</p>
<p>You have to figure out whether it’s worth it to stay with your extremely controlling parents for the next several years and struggle emotionally through college or if you would be better off to take out loans, work fulltime, go to a community college and then a 4 year college or do whatever else you’d need to do to go to college and live your life without your parents’ help and interference.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, you are one of the most knowledgeable posters here and I trust your advice more than people my own age: what would you do if you were me? I have no adults in my life I can trust; my aunt/uncle are like my parents, my grandparents are dead, I have no advisors/professors I’m close to or anyone like that. </p>
<p>On one hand, I have the option of sucking it up and graduating from a strong private college with 0 debt and a BS in Biochemistry which will leave me with a lot of options. I worked hard to get my scholarship and I love my college. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I could transfer to a CC for a year, and then a 4 year university. Problem is I wouldn’t get a scholarship as a transfer, and I’d have to get legally emancipated before I can get loans because my EFC is high. It’s really hard to get emancipated in this state before 21 but I guess I could talk to a lawyer. As of now I’m still waiting to turn 18. </p>
<p>If I went to CC, I’d be working long hours to pay back students loans anyhow. But I also wouldn’t have to deal with my parents, whose heads I feel like throwing a brick at right now. They’re insane people with backwards beliefs and I don’t plan to keep in touch with them after I graduate.</p>
<p>You’ve missed the application deadline by about 2 weeks, but Duke University gives financial aid to transfer students (see below). I’m certain that if Duke does, others likely do, too. Your stats are too good to go the community college route.</p>
<p>"Transfer applicants with more than two years’ credit from another institution should consider the following:</p>
<p>Duke will grant credit for only two years of work done elsewhere, regardless of how many credits a student has. The classes for which a student receives credit are chosen by the registrar.
The student is eligible for financial aid only for eight minus the number of semesters enrolled elsewhere. For example, for a student who has been enrolled two semesters elsewhere, only six semesters’ worth of financial aid will be available at Duke."</p>
<p>Perhaps you can look into transferring to Duke - it would make dealing with weekends at home much easier if you knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel.</p>
<p>Maybe you could move into co-op housing, which requires work shifts, and schedule all of that work on the weekend. Or get a job that requires weekend hours. There must be some legitimate excuse for staying on campus over the weekend.</p>
<p>If you’re planning to break off contact with them anyway…well, I thought that gay idea was pretty good, and probably effective-sounding. Sorry that I don’t have any serious advice, hope it works out somehow. :(</p>