The Curse of Moving Home

This is my first blog on the site, so I am gonna start with what I consider to be the most important life lesson any college senior can learn. If you are prone to mental instability like me, don't move back to your hometown after you graduate.

It might seem like a convenient decision at the time, or maybe you’re making it for sensible reasons, like “professional” ones. But if personal growth is something you value, go somewhere else. I’ve lived both situations, and trust me, it’s a lot better to be on a rollercoaster because you’re trying new things than to be on one that exists only in your mind and manifests itself horribly when it’s time to interact with other humans.

Step one in the process of deeply rooted depression is making the financially sound decision to move back in with your parents. It might be fun at first to sleep in the bed where you got your first handjob. It might also be nice to have a free roof over your head while you’re struggling college friends complain about exorbitant rents. But when the dust settles and you’re getting yelled at for not having a job yet and waking up at 5PM on a Tuesday, you’ll know that Cheddar Ted was spot on when he told you to pack up and ship out. Because even if you are lucky enough to get your hands on some sort of respectable employment, having to answer questions about your day can quickly grow inexplicably arduous. You are condemned to suffer from some pretty low morale either way you slice it.

Step two of the moving home syndrome is regressing to the person you were when you were 18 years old. This is partly a function of step one, but it’s also a function of interacting largely with the same people you knew in high school. For some this is a valuable, but often it can cause all the “growing up” you did to go straight down the tubes. This occurs because high school friends who split up for college tend to hyperbolize their worst characteristics in order to prove that their experience was the most insane and they had the most beers.

Step three is having access to unlimited snacks and cable television, which may seem incredible, but soon you will become very anti-social and find it extremely difficult to meet new people.

I hope you are duly uplifted by these truths! More on this phenomenon next time…