Courtesy of impawards.com
Texting seems like the easier solution to communicate with our parents, but that’s just not enough for them. They want to hear our voices. We don’t mind to call sometimes, but it’s hard when you’re in college. Time seems as if it goes by so much faster in college, and we usually have so much to do. And,if we’re doing something other than talking to them when on the phone, that’s a problem. “Why aren’t you paying attention to me? We barely get to talk!” is a very common sentence we hear. But the thing is, we are paying attention, we are multitasking! Parents seem to think that whenever they have free time, we do too. When we pick up the phone and say that we can’t talk, we usually get a reply something along the lines of “but, I’m free right now,” or “you need to make time for your parents.” They just don’t seem to understand that we have a schedule that is different from theirs. Our parents tend to always call us too early in the morning, and by nature, we tend to always call them too late at night. Our schedules are just so different that we are never able to talk.
Another thing that our parents do when they call us is make us repeat what we are saying several times after we explain the situation. Then, once they think they understand it, they begin making suggestions. Which makes us realize that they actually did not understand what we had said because their suggestions don’t make any sense. It takes us several tries to get them to fully understand what we are saying, and if we were in person, it would have wasted much less time. It’s just too hard to explain things over the phone to them while they themselves are trying to multitask.
We love going home and seeing our parents, and we wish that they could just wait until then. We love them so much of course, but it’s just easier to talk when we see them. If they just waited until we got home, we would have so much to talk about and so much time to spend with each other. And we know that they are paying for college, which we are very appreciative of, but we just wish that they’d understand. When we are not studying or doing homework, we are trying to have fun, and when we are not having fun or relaxing, we are studying or doing something productive… or procrastinating. Both our parents didn’t really get the full college experience, so they can’t really relate or understand what college life is like. That said, it makes sense that they call us all the time; they are trying to live vicariously through us and making sure that we aren’t doing anything we aren’t supposed to be doing.
Throughout high school, our parents called and texted us to let them know where we were when we were not in school, but now that we are in college, they don’t really know where we are. When our parents call and we tell them that we are off campus, they instantly panic because that means that they have no idea where we are.
Although we try to keep our parents in our lives and in the loop, sometimes it’s very hard. In college, there is inevitably going to be a big difference between our relationships from high school and in college. Whether we like it or not, we are not going to see them or talk to them as much. During high school, we spent every dinner with our parents because they were at home, and every dinner conversation would be about our day and all the things that we had to do. In college, we become closer to our friends because we eat every meal with them instead of our parents.
Miller is a member of the class of 2016.
Charugundla is a member of the class of 2016.
