Living at Home and Living Away from Home

Nowadays, most students study at a university after graduating from high school. Due to the distance between their hometowns and colleges, a few students live with their family while many others live far away from home, and the most of them think about living away from home as the best part in their lives because they will have more freedom and that can be really exciting for them. However, they do not realize that living at home has more benefits compared to living away from home. Firstly, I prefer living at home, because students who are living at home can enjoy better living conditions than ones living far from home. As home is the whole family’s place, it is normally large and well-equipped with many electric devices. Also, the work required to keep a home clean tends to go unnoticed when the mother does it. Clean floors, tidy rooms, and fresh laundry tend to be taken for granted. Even though the average teenager may help around the house one of the parents tends to do most of the housework. The floor is always clean, the rooms are always tidy, and laundry is never less than fresh and neatly folded. In addition, students are provided with fresh, nutritious food. On the contrary, dormitory or a rented house are usually small with poor facilities. For example, many students living in a cramped rented house have to use one small space for cooking, eating, learning and sleeping. Also the laundry will pile high and become a daunting task for them to achieve. The back door step will be dirty, and the rooms will become cluttered. Owing to busy learning, students may skip their meals or eat fast food, which badly influences their health. Secondly, living at home differs from living far away in that it helps students avoid financial problems. Living at home, students have the telephone bills, electricity bills and other daily expenses paid by their parents. Also living at home with parents makes bills appear as some fictional scary story. The most a students usually pays for is a car to drive, and a few other luxuries. The parents pay for the water left dripping, the gas burnt by the stove, and the power consumed by the light left on. Students living at home will never even notice any of these expenses. In contrast students living far from home have to pay all those things on their own with a monthly amount of money. Unlike students who receive parents’ instruction, students who do not live with their family often lack financial managing skills. As a result, they often spend money on unnecessary items and cope with running out of money. Another difference is the emotional aspect that you have to face. Living at home can result less frustrating than living alone because you can share the problems that you have with your parents, siblings or any member of your family in order to look for some solutions to difficult situations that you may face. In contrast, if you live away from home most of the time you are going to be alone, so finding someone who wants to listen your problems can be difficult to get. Your friends are going to be the only people that might help you to solve your problems. However, they are not your relatives and sometimes they are not going to be with you. The fourth difference between living at home and away from home is the environmental issue. Life at home is secure and well known. Furthermore, home is where one has lived their entire life and they are well adapted to the surroundings. On the other hand, the new home can be in a complete different neighborhood or city. Also, it’s not always similar to the home people are used to since the new house is usually smaller, less fancier, and it’s usually located in a less attractive neighborhood than the parents’ home. While the students who choose to leave home may think that it’s not a big deal to confront a decrease in their living status, those that choose to stay home might think that the difference in the environment is a major drawback. Finally, the other obvious difference is that living far from home provides students more independence than living at home. It goes without saying that parents want to take good care of children by setting a wide range of rules for them. Moreover, when you have an important meeting and it is impossible for you get home, you can stay at a friend’s house without problems. Consequently, students living with family have to ask for their parents’ permission if they want to go out or invite friends to their homes. Additionally, parents also control their time spent on using computer and TV. In contrast, students living without parents’ control have more privacy ecause they do not have to obey the strict rules. They can go out whenever they want and freely gather with their friends. Thanks to independent life, they can flexibly spend time on learning, surfing websites or playing games without any complaints. In general, though living at home and living far away from home have some considerable differences, each type has its own advantages and disadvantages to students, and at some moment in life you have to decide between staying at home with your parents as you have always done or starting a new life alone that means being independent. At the moment that you want to make a choice between these two styles of life. You should know that living at home and living away from home has some similarities and some differences that you have to consider before making a decision. Therefore, no matter what kinds of living students choose, they can still enjoy their wonderful life at college.