Sophia says …
Humans are indeed creatures of habit, but I didn’t know to what extent I really internalized this adage until the start of this school year.
Attending 13 years of mandatory education, naturally my parents established habits and routines to be adhered to before the school day began to make all of our lives easier. And as I grew up, those habits shifted, and changed and grew to become entirely mine.
While my routine in high school may have changed slightly with the season, I always had the same comforts of my morning routine. Leaving the house at the same time as the rest of my family — all of us off to our separate school buildings, enduring the same fight for the bathroom each and every weekday, even seeing the same school bus pass by the yard as I closed the front door behind me.
Moving abroad last year for college completely threw off any semblance of a routine I had left after graduating.
That’s what moving away is supposed to do: It forces you to expand your world, and discover new habits and practices. But because of the sheer volume of differences for me last year (new culture, new teaching style, new roommates, new friends, ect.), I found it very difficult to establish a consistent routine, even at the end of nine months and two full semesters in my new home away from home.
Spending this past summer back in Minnesota, living at my grandma’s and working the same 8-4 job every day finally allowed me to establish a new routine.
And I loved it. I once again had one alarm set to repeat every weekday, something my erratic class schedule didn’t give me a reason to do during the school year, and something that would have been more difficult considering I was sleeping three feet away from another person.
I never thought I minded having a roommate during the year, and I know I was very lucky to be paired with someone I now call a best friend, but after living for three months in a bedroom of my own, I’ve come to realize how lovely it is to establish an individual routine without needing to worry about the routine of the person next to you.
This school year, I’ve moved out of the dorms, and now share an apartment with two friends. I have my own bedroom and am easily establishing a new morning routine. Despite my irregular class schedule, I once again have a consistent alarm, and get to enjoy a cup of coffee at my dining room table while eating the same breakfast every day before class. Of course, it is a major factor that this year everything is familiar. It’s much easier to establish such routines because I’m not trying to figure out how to live in a new country anymore.
I know how to survive, and now I get the privilege of figuring out how to live.
