How I’m Rollin’ These Days

I’ve moved home. Not just for the winter break, but quite possibly for the rest of my college education.

As I posted a few days back, the whole college thing hasn’t been brilliant, particularly socially. I spend a lot of my time driving back from my present school, UMBC (near Baltimore, as per its name), to be back in DC. I’ve come to connect with DC in a way I haven’t connected with any other American city, and as long as I’m in this country it’s hard to imagine being anywhere else. I don’t have many friends, but they’re here, for now. It’s where I feel comfortable. I’d launch into a long exultation of the virtues of DC but… some other time.

So my parents, having noticed how much time I spend driving back “home” to the city, rather generously suggested that I move back to their place in Bethesda (which, for those of you unfamiliar with the DC area, is a neighborhood in bordering Maryland quite close to the District). For the next semester, during which I’ll almost certainly continue at UMBC, I’ll commute to school like the (percieved) majority of students there. And I’m applying to GWU for the Fall of my junior year, that campus is wonderfully smack-dab in DC and possessing of their Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute. Of course, should I not get in to GWU and have to remain at UMBC, that would be just fine too.

The question I’ve gotten quite a bit from friends is, predictably: “wow, you could move back in with your parents?!” Yeah, I could, and quite happily. I’m incredibly close to my mother and stepfather, and the arrangement of space in the house allows me to come and go as I please without disturbing anyone else. It is odd, I admit, being a young man who considers himself pretty mature and urban to be now living at home in the suburbs (though city-adjacent and quite lovely suburbs they are). But it’s not like I’ve given up a lot of freedom or city culture by leaving my residence on the UMBC campus: with no social scene there, only somewhat close proximity to the cultural near-wasteland that is Baltimore, and the summer camp vibe of my former apartment-cum-dormitory I certainly don’t feel like I was an independent young adult just starting to make my way in the world. And, that aside, I wasn’t having any goddamn fun living on campus, which is what it comes down to.

I get to be back near my city. With classes a mere four days a week this coming Spring semester (Monday through Thursday) I can take the repeated advice I’ve gotten and “treat school like a job, get in and get out,” and indeed get out to the place I love the remainder of the time. I get to listen to NPR and sing to myself in my car during the commute. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

And if it doesn’t work out I’ll go live with Scott. Or go be G’s private chef, as she keeps offering. Yeah. Either one of those would work out great.