I’ve just seen another TV show in which a kid going off to college is seen as the final departure from the family home. Sometimes the parents redecorate the child’s bedroom as soon as the kid leaves for college, or they talk about converting the bedroom to a “man cave” or a workout room.
This sort of thing always bothered me, because in my experience and that of my peers, going off to college as a freshman wasn’t a final thing. I came back for the Thanksgiving break, the winter break between semesters, Spring Break and the summers. And even after graduating, some of us returned home while looking for a job or starting that first one.
What did you do when going off to college? Did your parents immediately redecorate your room?
We had a big family, so you didn’t get to keep your room when you went off to college. If you moved back home, for a summer or whatever, room would be made for you, but it wasn’t kept intact while you were gone. It makes no sense for two siblings to have to share a room and another room stay empty, or even to let a room stay empty when a computer room/office was really needed for the rest of the family.
It was presumed I would be returning during breaks between terms and for the Summer, so my room wasn’t really repurposed. However, in my absence, many of my belongings were given away, including most of my books. I wasn’t given any warning or even told about it until I got home and saw my empty bookshelf. Suffice to say, I wasn’t too happy.
About two months after I was off to college my parents moved to an entirely different city. So presumably the next residents redecorated my room.
The parents had a spare bedroom, but it wasn’t my room, it was the guest bedroom. I did at one point come back to live with them for a summer so it was “my” room for the duration, after which it was the guest bedroom again.
My parents kept my room intact until after I’d finished college (which was also the same time that I had gotten my first full-time job, and moved to another state). They had a four-bedroom house, but there was just four of us (my parents, my sister, and me).
I took “my stuff” with me when I moved, and my parents remodeled my old room into a guest room over the next year or two after that. My sister, who now lives with my parents again, lives in my old room, and her old bedroom is now the guest room, and where my wife and I stay when we go up to visit.
I moved to my sister’s room when she got married and my old room was turned into a den/office. When I moved out, my (new) room just became a spare bedroom. As the youngest of three, it left my parents alone in a 4 bedroom house so they had tons of free space.
I grew up in a two-bedroom with a brother 6 1/4 years younger than me. We didn’t really have strict bedroom assignments, but we generally shared a bedroom. My parents did have a room, but it sometimes switched. So, when I went off to college, nothing really changed – I wasn’t attached to a certain room of the house for my sleeping quarters. Even now with two little kids, while they do technically share a room, sometimes they sleep in that room; sometimes they sleep with us; sometimes I sleep on the futon downstairs or in the extra bedroom (even when I’m not in trouble – I snore or sometimes I just want to putter around on the web or with a book). I guess growing up the way I did, I didn’t particularly have a need for a certain room (other than my office) to be my own.
We had a small bungalow house, originally 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, later a 3rd bedroom was added. I was the younger of two offspring, when I left to go to college 2,000 miles away, my parents didn’t really have any other use for that space so it just sat as it was. Two years later I was back home and going to a local college, so I stayed there. It didn’t last long. My father gave me one lecture too many and within six months I left for good. I don’t know what they did with the space after that.
My room was mine until I graduated college (in 4 years–that was the agreement). I kept it for the summer while I was working, and moved in August. My room became a guest room.
Less than a month after my departure, my room was converted to a home office equipped with a new tangled device called a “personal computer” that I’d been begging for since my junior year in high school.
I stayed home until I was ~22 to save on costs and went to an overwhelmingly commuter university. We were renters and after I landed a full-time job and moved out (along with one step-brother), my father and step-mother promptly moved to the opposite side of the country . I did switch bedrooms twice in those years as my two step-brothers cycled in and out of the house (never more than one at a time), finally settling on the one I preferred.
I was in that house for about ten years, so I hardly grew up there and had no strong affection or sense of permanency about any of those rooms. I was originally cubby-holed in a Harry Potteresque makeshift space after I rather abruptly landed in that household in 8th grade (shift from one divorced parent to the other). I liked that last one the best, but have only a little bit of nostalgia about it.
I had the nicest of kids’ bedrooms, so when i went to college, my sister got my room, and her room was converted to a guest bedroom, where i stayed when i visited.
Several years later, after all the kids had moved out and if started a family, we moved in with my parents for a couple of months. We got the run that had been mine, and our kids lives in the room that had been my brother’s.
Only child in a three bedroom house. At the time I graduated from high school, both my room and the spare room had beds. When I went to college, the spare room got transformed into my mom’s office / sitting room, with a sofa bed. My bedroom stayed as mine until I graduated from college and got married, just a few months later.
I think the bed stayed for another year or two, until my parents installed a murphy bed in the walk-out basement, and no longer wanted a room dedicated to a bed. When we visit, we’re in the basemet.
It slowly became a storage room. There was an interim period where I kinda jumped over the stuff to get to the bed. But eventually it was too full, and I just slept on the couch when I came home—it was more comfy anyways.
It works a bit differently for most uni students here in Australia - as a general rule, people go to university in whichever city they live in (or if it’s somewhere else, they move permanently), and Australian students don’t generally move into dorms the way they do in the US.
Pretty much everyone I knew at uni had either moved out of home permanently and was flatting/living in a sharehouse (as I was), or still lived at home with their parents.
Broadly speaking, if I (or most other students) wanted to study a university degree at a university in a different city, then we’d move to that city and get a flat/job there and basically the understanding would be that we live there now and aren’t likely to be coming back except for family visits - unless we get a job in the city we grew up in, or something like that.
It wouldn’t be so much “I live in Townsville but am at uni in Melbourne” but “I used to live in Townsville but moved to Melbourne for uni and live here now”, if that makes sense.
I was a commuting student the first time I went to college, so nothing really changed. But as soon as I joined the Navy, the bedroom switches started. One sister and I shared one bedroom, my other 2 sisters shared the smaller one. So the sister I shared with got the smaller room and the youngest 2 moved into what had been our room. When I came home on leave, I slept on the sofabed in the basement.
With 7 (then 6) people in a 3 bedroom house (plus the extra room my dad built in the basement for my brother) no one had the luxury of having a room preserved just for them. I didn’t have a room of my own till I got my first apartment at age 21…
My old bedroom is still a bedroom, with most of the decor, even, still as I had it (including a few hundred elephants of various sorts on the shelves). And in the event that I spend the night at Mom’s house, it’s of course still the room I sleep in. It’s also still referred to as “my room”, whenever any member of the family needs to specify that room for some reason. But when, as usual, I’m not there, and there’s anyone else visiting, it or my sister’s room function as guest bedrooms.
I left at 16, and my mother sold the house and moved away before I eventually went to college. She married and gained stepchildren in addition to my younger sister. Some of these people had bedrooms in that house and lived there, but not me, I never had a key to the place either. Not much hanging around involved.
– I snore or sometimes I just want to putter around on the web or with a book). I guess growing up the way I did, I didn’t particularly have a need for a certain room (other than my office) to be my own.
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