Being a college student is a time to gain your independence and to start learning how to live without your parents. At college, we get to live with our friends and mold ourselves into educated adults. It is the time away from our parents we get to learn lessons of being on our own. Going home every weekend can hurt your growth as an adult as well as your college community by not being active on the weekends.
The weekends are meant for doing fun activities and relaxing with your friends. Blackburn College has around 600 students and many leave the campus on weekends to go home. Students who do not have the opportunity to go home on the weekends are alone and it creates an atmosphere of a divided community. When students continue to leave every weekend, the weekends seem meaningless to the students who stay on campus. “It is sad because it reminds me of how lonely it can be this far away from home. I feel useless because I do not have any means of transportation and [because no one is here] I [am] confined to my dorm room,” said junior Spanish major Samary García.
Garcia is among several students who are at least 10 hours from home. There are students from California, Florida, Texas, New Zealand and Puerto Rico, to name a few, who remain on campus and have to deal with a population of students who do not want to spend their free time with the community.
Not all students who cannot go home on the weekends oppose an emptier campus. Junior Ugo Pierantoni is from New Zealand and said he uses the time of emptiness on campus to wind down and get a lot of studying done.
Freshman Mikayla Morgan goes home nearly every weekend. “I like getting away from the campus. It reduces my feeling of being overwhelmed with work and school,” she said. If students who live far away are given the opportunity to go home, many would exercise the option to go home once in awhile, but that would not change the issue of the campus being empty on the weekends.
Weekends are a gift to college students. There are no classes, so weekends should be celebrated. If there is no one around to have fun with, then the gift seems meaningless. Staying on campus most weekends creates a more positive and fun environment to live in. The more you invest in your community, the more you will get out of it. It is not a bad thing to visit family or to enjoy a special family outing, but it is time to claim your independence and enjoy the freedom college has allowed you.