College for most people is a time you have to learn to grow up and be on your own. You don’t have any parents around to tell your what to do or when you need to do something. You really have to learn how to be your own adult, take responsibility and hold yourself accountable.

One of the things you realize the most is how important your parents are. How much of the things you ignored growing up was true once you got into the real world. You start to figure out that in certain ways you do need them even when growing up you said you didn’t.

“When I got into college it was all fun and games until I figured out I was really on my own. I wasn’t able to just ask my mother or father for help when I needed something I had to do it on my own. The worst was the times when I would be sick and I had to take care of myself. That is a different type of hurt,” Kenny Green, QU freshman, said.

When a person in college gets sick that is one of the first signs of you really missing your parents. Everybody knows how a mother is when it comes to taking care of her children. Making sure they are ok and taking the right medicine. In college you have to find the strength to get up and try to get back healthy.

Start appreciating your family while they’re still here and making sure you’re fine. So many people take parents as a joke and like they’re in the way. We have to wake up and realize what we have in front of us and that God placed them in our lives for a reason.

Some people don’t have any parents at all so for them it’s much harder. They never was able to get that real motherly love that most people are used to. So for them they have always been in survival mode so they are more experienced in doing things alone.

“Being here on campus away from my family is really different. I come from a household where my parents played a major role in my life. They where around and took care of almost everything. I grew up really spoiled and came from a background of not needing anything. I’ve stayed here this summer to work and see what life was like on my own. It was completely different. I needed it though because it helped me to be a better man and let me feel what it was like to be alone,” Cody Brown, junior, said.

College will make you grow up and make you really look at life different. Don’t be in a rush to grow up. Things will take place at its own pace. Be sure that you’re ready for all that life has in store and that you have an open mind. Tell your parents that you love them today.