This summer I grew up. It was my first summer away from home.

Instead of moving my stuff… This summer I grew up. It was my first summer away from home.

Instead of moving my stuff back into my air-conditioned New Jersey house as usual, I packed into a six-person sauna with my friends in South Oakland. I left behind a familiar and well-paying job to search for a new one. I left behind my mom, my friends, my long-term boyfriend, his ferrets and my dog. I cooked all my meals.

But I was excited about it. I was going to be working at The Pitt News so all my friends were going to be in town, and it would be good to have the freedom of 350 miles.

Unfortunately, the reality of this first summer disappointed. Moving from campus to South Oakland was more difficult than I thought. From Holland Hall, my house is about five minutes and 40 domestic disputes away and it didn’t help that I was living three floors up. Once my junk was piled into my room, I was on my own. There were so many boxes and so much time, so I should have been grateful.

The room ended up being really nice — particularly when compared to last year’s version. So now I was sleeping comfortably, but I needed to stop eating at KenTacoHut, so I went grocery shopping. This is a daunting task especially with no training other than running in 7-Eleven at 1 a.m. and deciding on a coffee flavor. Planning a whole week of three-meal days with 20 aisles of boxed food and a tight budget is frightening. However, seeing as I’m not dead or completely broke, I did eventually learn the ropes.

Now that I had secured the house and the food, I needed to get a job. I have four years of waitressing experience and Pittsburgh is full of places to eat, so naturally you are picturing me in an apron full of 10s and 20s. Eight applications later, I was still jobless. I have served more pancakes in my career than I care to mention, but Oakland’s most popular pancake place said no to me. I didn’t even make the cut to be a Target Team Member. I was longing for my job at home where I would walk home with $150 every Sunday and I knew everyone. I finally found a job I loved in July, but the aggravation boiled up again when I found out they had been desperately looking for someone since May.

Also, apparently absence does not make the heart grow fonder — it just makes the heart really ticked off. Mark and I have been in different parts of the country for 2 1/2 of our four years together, so I didn’t expect this summer to be anything new. There would be sadness when he left Pittsburgh, but I would be fine. But the fun of the freedom of no parents just wasn’t as fun without him. What’s so fun about having a queen-sized bed all to yourself? I do have the ability to live without a man or to be away from Mark for more than two seconds, but I guess after four years and a summer full of free time apart, I realized that I don’t want to.

And although I have good friends here, I have a few at home too and getting a phone call once a week to find out belated gossip rather than being there for it just doesn’t cut it. But as I’m writing this, I know if I had stayed home instead, I would be getting the same abridged phone calls, just from a Pittsburgh friend.

So maybe this summer was good for me after all. Maybe I learned what I really want and I what I can really handle. I don’t feel I wasn’t ready or I had the most miserable summer ever. But it’s official that I’m still homesick for my mom and I still can’t believe I picked a school with no beaches. But these are the sacrifices we all have to make. We take time apart from the familiar things in life and we figure out which ones we can’t live without. This year is my last year in college and I have no intention of wasting time dreaming about the Jersey shore. It will be there when I go back, and until then, Pittsburgh is home.

Erin Brachlow is the copy chief of The Pitt News and is looking forward to a whole year in which all of her friends will be 21.