But what if they don’t have many friends?
I don’t think a student should go home every weekend. I don’t think parents should expect them to. Going home every weekend takes away from the experience for sure. I think it’s reasonable for parents to expect (if feasible) kids to come home for breaks and maybe a surprise here and there. A student can’t prevent a parent from wanting them home but they can impress on the parents that they need to be there to get the full experience and stay current with school work. Stretch the truth to avoid hurt feelings, “I signed up for ___ meeting. Or I have a study group for ___ on Saturday…”
Living on a college campus serves two purposes in my mind. It provides the chance for students from all over the country and the world for that matter to attend that particular school, and it provides the opportunity for students to immerse themselves into their education, activities, and college life. College campuses are busy places and there is usually a ton of stuff to do such as attend interesting lectures, go to different types of concerts, plays, sporting events, gallaries, etc,. not to mention the party scene and whatnot if that is what a student happens to be into. It is a unique situation and way of life that you don’t get to experience in any other setting in life. It is special for these reasons.
If a student wants to go home every weekend, or their family or job circumstances are going to require them to be home each weekend, then to me it would seem wisest to choose a college close to home and commute if the distance is reasonable and/or if there is public transportation available. It seems silly to pay all that money to live on campus only to not be there 1/4th of the time.
My daughter goes to school on the east coast of the US and we live in Asia, so she can only come home during Christmas break, and maybe in the spring after second semester if she doesn’t have an internship or job in the states for the summer. She has a roommate whose parents live less than 20 minutes away, and that roommate only goes home for the major holidays or breaks. Her roommate’s mother does visit once in a while to bring treats for her daughter and roommates, or the different season’s clothing to her daughter, but otherwise the roommate is at school most of the time like my daughter and the other two roommates who live to far away to go home often.
These choices are personal, and based on a variety of factors that are unique to the person who has to make this decision. For us there was no choice, but even if we lived a mile away from our daughter’s college, we would want her to live on campus, immerse herself in her studies, the music groups that she is in, the events that she likes to attend, and also have the time to study and learn to live on her own.
I think that it is the student’s job to become more independent…that the students should not go home because of empty nest syndrome. That is something the parents work on.
Parents drop off the student, visit for Parent’s weekend,…then the student comes home for Thanksgiving and Christmas as an example of the fall semester.
You won’t really get to make strong friendships if you are going home every weekend.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please use old threads for reference only. This one is from 2012.