Graduated. YES! College here I come. It’s going to be great. Just like the movies. I’ll live with fabulous girls, and we’ll go to all the parties (looking fly as hell) and we’ll be best friends forever! Wrong. So wrong. I don’t know if I’m the only person this has happened to, but living situations since leaving my dad’s house have been, well a nightmare. Thankfully a hilarious nightmare, so I’ll survive! I’m writing this to let everyone who has had terrible roommates know, you are not alone. So, please sit back, relax, and enjoy my roomate woes!
After graduating high school, I had my eyes set on the University of Utah. One problem: this school is really expensive. I loved the U, but I wasn’t ready to start racking up debt and another school had offered me a scholarship. I took the scholarship and did my generals at my second choice school (while preparing for an imminent transfer, which has thankfully happened). Now that I had chosen my school, my bright-eyed, freshly graduated, eighteen-year-old self, was ready to do what all college kids do. Move out! I love my dad, but I was ready to spread my wings!
So, what did I do? I moved into my mom’s house. Don’t judge, at the time it wasn’t as lame as it sounds now. My mom’s dedicated to her job, and when she’s not working she’s vacationing, so she wasn’t home often. My best friend and I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of this opportunity and decided to take over the upstairs part of her house, paying insanely cheap rent. This house was closer to campus and I had my best friend by my side, so with an idiotic sense of freedom and independence inside of me, I packed up all my belongings and moved a whopping twenty minutes away from my dad.
Bliss at first, for like the first day! I quickly realized that my mom, who never seemed to be home, was actually home all the time. How was I supposed to manage school, work, and a kick ass social life living with my mom?
Well I’m not proud of it, but my roommate and I managed to trick her with a fabulous plan we thought up. December 21, 2012 was the day the world was supposed to end as foretold by the Mayans. It was a perfect excuse to throw a party!
“Mom, you should go out, go to the time-share, and relax. You have enough points to pay for the room,” I told her. I continued with the worst lie I’ve ever told her, saying, “I have some friends coming over for a movie night and I told them that this is my house. I’ll be so embarrassed if they find out I live with you.” All in all, this was code for, “Mom! Get out! I’m trying to have a party here, and your presence will definitely kill the mood!” With a lot of luck, we convinced her that she didn’t want to be home that night. We finally had the freedom (along with the insanely stressful thought that my mom would come home and bust us) to throw a party!
Our insane “End of the World” party was going to be perfect, until only about ten people showed up. Was it worth it? You decide… But I’m going to say no.
Here’s the obvious take away point: don’t live with your mom if you want to party in college. It’s too nerve-racking and tiring. You also have to pray to any and all spiritual deities that you can wake up, throw up, and clean up before mom comes strolling home!
Oh, and there’s one other down fall to living with your mom and trying to live the freshman college dream, and that is boys. Unless you have a heroic, devoted boyfriend, who doesn’t think you’re crazy for living with your mom and literally referring to her as your roommate, forget about boys. I tried to have boys over and I don’t think it went well once. Whether we were trying to watch a movie and could hear my mom downstairs blowing her nose or yelling at my little brother (oh yeah, did I forgot to mention he was also inhabiting my humble abode?), or getting…ahem…personal and receiving a text from her asking us to be quiet; boys having a good time at my house was just not in the picture.
Collegiettes™,
If you’ve found a way to harmoniously manage all aspects of your life while living with your mom, I applaud you and beg you to share your knowledge! I also beg you to please not misinterpret my words. I love my mom. While I lived with her we had amazing heart-to-heart talks that only mothers and daughters can have, and I never went hungry (Mom’s pantry game was on point)! Having my mom as my roommate though, was just not how I personally saw the rest of my college career being lived.
So if you hadn’t already assumed this, after the year was up I moved… back into my dad’s house (hey, it was only for the summer). The University of Utah dorms were next, and oh boy do my tales of woe continue there…