<p>Now that summer break is here, I'm wondering about how many students actually get to go home when school lets out. In my case, it depends on definition of home. I personally stay where I live, because I don't have the money to travel anywhere further away than San Francisco or Santa Cruz. I attend school in California while my mom and stepdad and brother live in Colorado, and they are the ones who raised me. I lived there until I was 20 and left for a Job Corps in Montana, and after 15 months there I graduated and got relocated to California to attend a community college. Now I live with my grandmother, but am supposed to move in with my father soon. As things look now, I will most likely stay in California after climbing up the academic rungs to a graduate degree. My father divorced my mother when I was young and only had weekend custody, and spend about a third of my childhood behind bars, while my stepdad has been around so long that I don't remember a time without him, so from a paternal standpoint I am closer to my stepdad than my father. So, the people who raised me are in Colorado, but I live in the same state I plan to settle in. I also grew up in the same county I currently live and attend school in, so almost everywhere I go is familiar from my childhood. Home is a very complicated definition to me.</p>
<p>Anyway, enough rambling about myself and what is and is not home. For most of you, it's a lot simpler. Who gets to go home or have their loved ones go home? What do the ones who can't do?</p>
<p>For my freshman year of college, I came home for every holiday: Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Break, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and part of Spring Break. I had a car and my mom paid for the costs of travel. </p>
<p>Next year, the only holidays I’m coming home for are Thanksgiving and part of Christmas Break. She is still willing to pay for me to travel and the like, but I don’t want to come home so often. </p>
<p>My kids came home for the school year breaks. Summer after freshman year my older son worked from home programming for my brother who has a business based in Boston (we are in NY). The following three summers he had internships in CA which paid enough to easily cover housing costs and/or had housing allowances. Younger son spent three weeks of his freshman year summer in Jordan to improve his Arabic. He worked a little for me the rest of the summer. The following three summers he’s had a job through Tufts that includes living in the dorms at low or no cost.</p>
<p>None of my kids came home consistently after sophomore year, and one stayed on even after freshman year. My son currently in college moved to off campus digs last year which has a 12 month lease, so rather than subletting his room, he found a job there and will stay there throughout the summer. That was the case with some of the others some of the other times as well. In two cases, they rented such broken down dumps at the end of the school year, that it took all summer to make those places even habitable. Shudder. And I am not exaggerating. In one case the slum lord actually"generously" gave the place rent free for half the summer. </p>
<p>The ones who did come home summers had very lucrative jobs and wanted to stash as much money away as possible. Some of them made as much as $9-10K working up to 4 jobs over the summer here. Still would not have netted out if they had to pay market rent, but living at home and using our family resources they made out big time. My son currently at school is really not making any money. it works out because he has to pay rent over the summer anyways, but had he sublet his place,even a half the cost and come home, he’d have made out financially. </p>
<p>One can often find inexpensive housing over the summer in a student area as there is a market for summer sublets and students will discount actual rents to get something to offset some of the cost. My friend’s DD at USC has gorgeous place, but since she is leaving her things there, she discounted it for half price. That is a huge bargain for that apartment, but better than getting nothing and having to pay the rent all out of pocket. Frankly, I’d hoped my son would do this, but he chose not to do so.</p>
<p>I personally never came home after I left for college except for short visits. There is still an active student community around most schools in the summer, and I stayed in the area, in 12 month off campus apartments after my first year which I spent in cheap sublets. So you definitely won’t be alone sticking around a college during the summers. </p>
<p>My son is only 4-hours away, but freshman year came home thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break. He came home for a few days after move-out, then moved into a house off campus (12-month lease). He’s working on campus this summer so decided to take a couple of general ed classes, too. He plans to come back to visit sometime in early September for his dental appointment and to get the car serviced (which I will pay for). Classes don’t start until 9/22, but he is also squeezing in a cross country trip (flying back east and sharing the driving back to California with a girl friend who wants to bring her car back). I don’t know what his plans are for next school year. I’m sure he’ll come back for Christmas for a few days, but not the entire break. I have no idea about Thanksgiving. I reimburse him for the gas when he comes to visit. </p>
<p>Mine also did not come home for summers except for the summer after freshman year. A million years ago I followed the same pattern, came home for the summer after freshman year and then not again for an entire summer.</p>
<p>I went to college in my hometown so I went home at some point every summer. But for sophomore-junior, and junior-senior summers, I worked the entire summer, so had my school been somewhere else, I wouldn’t have gone home either of those summers.</p>
<p>Just when you get used to having them not coming home, living at home, many parents are having college grads moving back home because they can’t find jobs that pay a living wage. </p>
I’m sad that I can’t afford to see my family often, but I wouldn’t want to go back and live in Colorado again. I miss my family, and I want to see them, but at the same time I’m a Californian. Colorado never really felt right, and California does. I also don’t really have the ability to live with my parents without fighting with them. As long as I lived under their roof, I’d be treated like I was 16, not 23. Seeing them is great, and I do wish they were actually accessible, but at the same time I need a greater degree of independence than they’d ever be willing to provide.</p>
<p>So, I’m a bit sad, but it’s temporary and will pass. It’s just part of being an adult and not a teenager, I guess I like where I live, and I like where I plan to move to even more. I love my college, and I’m looking at really good chances of getting into the program I set my heart on at SFSU. I just haven’t seen my mom and stepdad and brother in eighteen months, and most likely won’t until my sister gets married (October 2015).</p>
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A mixture of factors. I was born and raised in California, and didn’t leave for Colorado until I was 18. I’ve always been one of those people with great pride in my state, and I had the idea that I was going to return and settle here eventually. At Job Corps I began prepping for college. I looked at the university systems in California, Colorado, and Montana, and I didn’t meet the prerequisites to apply for university in any of these states. The University of Montana was willing to waive prerequisites, the systems in Colorado and California were not. So, I applied to the UM under the idea that I’d do two years there and transfer to a California university for the rest of my time in college. I got accepted to the UM, but got classified as out of state, because living on a federal facility for over a year didn’t establish Montana residency. I’d registered to vote in Montana and obtained Montana ID, so I wasn’t a Colorado resident, either. Since I did all of my high school in California and graduated here, I am eligible for in state tuition rates and state financial aid, even if I am no longer a resident of California. So, when my grandma tried to talk me into moving in with her instead of paying 35K a year for the UM, I agreed. She lives 2 1/2 miles from De Anza College, and that’s a very good position for me to be in in regards to cost of attendance and ease of transferring to a California university.</p>
<p>It’s okay to feel a little blue because you can’t see your family… This is part of being an adult who has left the nest. Overall, to me, you’ve done well making decisions that work for you. </p>