“Like I’m in high school again”
Fights over who gets to control the television. Arguments that the music is too loud. Notes taped to doors, ordering parents to keep out.
As American campuses abruptly shuttered last month amid the worst public health crisis in their lifetime, thousands of crestfallen students journeyed back to their parents’ homes — and to their childhood bedrooms, household chores and limited freedom.
“I feel like I’m in high school again,” said Gabriela Miranda, 21, whose parents enforced strict rules when she was a teen — and enforced them again when she returned home last month for spring break.
She didn’t complain much when she faced those restrictions last month — ask permission to see friends, be home by 10 p.m. — because she expected to return to the University of Georgia, where she is a junior, and to her unconstrained, occasionally hedonistic college routine.
But then the university announced that classes would move online for the rest of the semester, deflating any hope she had for continued independence.
“Before the pandemic got crazy,” Miranda said, “my parents would say, ‘Why do you want to go out — it’s family time?’ Now they just don’t want me to leave the house.”
College students across the country have had to adapt to online classes, social isolation and fears of infection. Some are in quarantine after returning from disrupted study abroad programs, while others are agonizing over the cancellation of graduation ceremonies, athletic competitions and internships.
But the more difficult adjustment, many said, has been returning to their parents’ homes — and their parents’ rules.
“After living so long without your parents, you can’t do it again. It drives you crazy,” said Hayden Frierdich, 22, a senior at the University of Alabama who is scheduled to graduate this spring into a job market devastated by the coronavirus.
Until the pandemic upended his semester, Frierdich had worked as a bartender in downtown Tuscaloosa. He temporarily lost his job, so he went to stay with his mother and sister in Pensacola, Fla. But neither of his parents, who are divorced and raising his younger siblings, can afford an extra mouth to feed, he said. Nor do they have the money to cover the $1,000 he needs for monthly rent and car payments.
Late last month, his boss offered him a different position at the bar, which is now open only for takeout and deliveries, so he returned to his college town — good fortune, he said, because he regained his financial independence.
Angela Kang, a senior at the University of Texas, and her twin brother recently moved back into their parents’ suburban Austin home, forcing the entire family to readjust to life together.
“We’re all kind of locked in different rooms with our online life and conference calls,” said Kang, 22, who has struggled to focus on her remote-learning classes and write her thesis in the absence of the typical school-day routine.
With Texas under a shelter-in-place order, making it impossible to work even at a coffee shop, Kang has come to view her bedroom almost like her entire offcampus apartment, serving as a place to sleep, study and work out.
But the cramped spaces have motivated the Kangs to revive family traditions, such as Sunday dinners and movie nights on Fridays. At the same time, Kang and her brother have gained a new appreciation for chores. “Just to get my hands somewhere that’s not a keyboard.”
Alyssa Ashcraft, also a senior at Texas, does not have nearly as much space now as she had in her apartment, which she left after the campus closed. Now she’s back at her parents’ house in Nederland, Texas, sharing her childhood bedroom — and childhood bed — with her older sister.
Navigating each other’s sleep schedule is one thing, but the bigger challenge, she said, is when everyone is awake. Ashcraft, who still has her job with the university’s alumni association, is working from home, as are her parents, who are schoolteachers.
When she needs her space, Ashcraft takes her laptop to the porch. She’ll tack a handwritten sign on the door that says, “I’m in class,” or, “I’m in a meeting,” so no one goes outside.