Joining the grown-ups: first-year students make the leap

Eighteen candles on the birthday cake may make you an adult in the eyes of the law but, in reality, turning 18 is only the beginning of the “adulting” process.

Yes “adulting” is a word now. Just as one generation turned the noun “parent” into a verb, another is doing the same with “adult”.

US writer Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, chose it as her word of the year in 2014 and predicted it would catch on as a useful term for “acting like an adult or engaging in activities usually associated with adulthood – often responsible or boring tasks”.

There’s nothing that accelerates this transition quicker than living away from home for the first time. So we’ve asked some university students who are doing just that, how they are coping so far in their first semester.

‘Your friends become your family’

Chloe Demolder (18) from Kildare and Tara-Anne Smyth (18) from Cork felt seriously out of their comfort zones when they first became roommates in on-campus accommodation at

Dublin City University

(DCU).

On Chloe’s first night, when she should have been going to the residence block party, she admits that she sat in her room and cried because she didn’t know anybody. However, she has been surprised how quickly she has adapted to her new life.

Now, although she goes home every weekend, she says she suffers FOMO (fear of missing out) and is excited to get back on campus on Sunday evenings. She loves being “so in the loop”.

“I don’t have to worry about missing out on events or nights out because I don’t have a place to stay, or waking up hours in advance of lectures. Also, I have met some of the most amazing people who are also living on campus.”

What she has found challenging is “spending so much time and money making food, just to be hungry in half an hour and do it all over again; also the strictness of the rules with regards to guests, inspections and common rooms”.

Chloe has her own bedroom, but shares a bathroom and kitchenette with Tara-Anne; the accommodation costs them each €5,000 for the academic year and both are studying communications.

Tara-Anne says she was surprised how hard she found getting used to living away from her parents and younger sister.

“It made me realise how important my family is to me and how much I rely on them because I miss not seeing them every day.”

At the beginning of college, she hadn’t planned to make the three-hour bus trip back to Cork too often, “but then I realised that was too hard, so now I go home most weekends”.

However, on the positive side, the move “has forced me to come out of my comfort zone and socialise with people and try new things. Your friends become your family when you live away from home for college and that’s something I’m so happy to have experienced.”

Apart from her family, she misses “small things that I only noticed I liked when I didn’t have them anymore. Things like having a double bed, watching TV in the evenings with my mom and family dinners.”

‘Budgeting is definitely a problem’

Connell McHugh (19) from Athlone, Co Westmeath, who is studying for a BA in Journalism at

NUI Galway

, says the lack of home comforts took some getting used to after he moved into Corrib Village, on-campus accommodation. He shares the apartment with three other lads, has a single-bed room and it costs just over €5,000 for the academic year.

It had been just him and his mother at home since his sister went to college in 2013, so he says it is good to learn how to compromise again.

“There are times that you might want to have people over or watch TV, but you always have to remember that there’s other people in the apartment who are paying the same as you.”

Budgeting is “definitely a problem”, he says, as he never had to manage money for himself before.

“Buying food for one person is hard to do and some of it goes off before I have the chance to finish it.” He goes home every weekend, so that leaves four dinners a week to be planned – pasta and chicken curry are what he tends to make.

To sum up what’s good about his new-found freedom, he recalls a picture he saw on Facebook recently that said: “The best thing about college: nobody tells you what to do. The worst thing about college: nobody tells you what to do.”

“I think the same can be said for living away from home,” he says. “The freedom and independence are great to have, but it’s nice to get some direction every once in a while.”

What does he miss about home? It’s “much warmer than the apartment and you can’t beat your own bed. I think everybody misses their pet a bit too.”

‘I’m having to learn to cope with depression on my own’

For Zoë Holman (19) the move away from her family in west Cork to study communications at DCU has been particularly challenging. She has mental health issues, but was lucky, she says, to have had a care team who prepared her for what she describes as a “massive adjustment”.

It also helps that she lives with two close friends, in a rented house in Inchicore for which they pay €500 a month each.

“We are all really comfortable around each other and they were both aware of my illness from the start, so are able to see when I’m getting really bad and might need some kind of outside intervention, or even just a bit of help and love from them.”

Stability and routine are very important for someone with mental health issues, she explains, so she has struggled with the upheaval. It is the first time she has had to care for herself, for example, making doctor’s appointments and cooking for herself, while in the midst of a bad bout of depression.

“Usually my parents would have imposed that structure and stability, so now I’m having to learn to do all that totally alone, which is a much more adult lesson than I think most students have to learn in college.”

However, coming from a rural area where there was little going on, friends living miles away and no public transport, she is also revelling in her new sense of independence.

“I’m never bored in the city. I adore being able to get around by myself, being totally in charge of what I do and how I get there.”

She has been surprised to find how busy life is when you’re reliant on yourself for everything.

“Living at home you don’t have to consider things like grocery shopping, cooking or washing, so it’s a whole extra set of tasks to be factored into a day, which fills a surprising amount of time. It really makes me realise how much is done for me at home.”

Zoë makes the five-hour trip by coach and car home to her parents, her brother and her cat, once every four to six weeks. In the meantime, she messages her mother most days and rings home once a week.

Having experienced mental illness, she believes new students need more advice than the standard “don’t party too hard” and “don’t do drugs or you’ll die”.

“I feel as though we need to approach it more realistically and talk about hideous comedowns that can cause huge depression, which can be devastating away from home; not drinking to cover feelings of loneliness and being more aware of feelings like this before going out.”

As for “adulting”, she reckons she has reached a place where she is now aware that “no one ever truly feels like a fully fledged adult who 100 per cent knows what they’re doing. I think you’re always part of the way there and that’s what life is about.”

‘If I want something washed, I have to pay extra’

Aaron Jones (18) from Greystones, Co Wicklow, still enjoys the benefit of having an evening meal cooked for him because he is staying in “digs” in Glasnevin, close to DCU where he is studying multi media.

There is one other student in the house, along with the resident couple and their daughter.

“It is always amazing food,” he says of those evening dinners, although he confesses that one of the things he misses about home is being able to have an oven-baked pizza. That, along with being able to wash clothes immediately – “If I want something washed here I have to pay extra.”

What he doesn’t miss, though, is the three-hour commute he was doing from home to university. He now has a lot more freedom and time to do things on campus.

“I get to see my friends a lot more than I did when I lived in Greystones, and I can also take part in way more activities as a result of my extra time.”

He singles out budgeting as the biggest challenge since living away from home. He pays €112 a week for digs – travelling up on Sunday night and leaving on Thursday evening.

“At the moment I don’t have a proper part-time job, so my funds are slowly depleting. And finding the willpower to not buy food and drink or go out a lot is fairly hard to do.”

He keeps in touch with his parents almost every day by text, “usually just about getting more money into my bank account”, he jokes.

In hindsight, he wishes he had looked for accommodation sooner, as he thinks he would have found something cheaper. “There also could have been a chance for student accommodation, which I think I would enjoy more.”

As for “adulting”, he believes he is “somewhat” on the way there. “I’m fully in control of my degree and how I run my life.”

‘Takeaways delivered is a new thing for me’

Sudden independence came as a bit of a shock to Deirdre O’Connell (18) when she left Doolin, Co Clare, for the bright lights. Studying Law, Economics and Sociological and Political Studies at NUI Galway, she lives with two housemates in off-campus student accommodation, which costs her €3,000 for the academic year.

“Anybody can tell you that moving out of home to attend college requires independence, but I didn’t really believe it until I was thrown in the deep end.”

She found it “daunting” moving from a rural area, where everybody knows everybody and where she had had the same friends for years, to a city where she knew few people her own age. Even finding buildings on the university campus, let alone lecture theatres, was difficult at first.

“One benefit of living away from home is the freedom,” she says. “It is up to me to decide to join my friends tonight and hang out, or put the finishing touches on my assignment that is due in the next couple of days.”

Deirdre doesn’t go home as often as other students because “I was lucky enough to secure a job [as a hotel waitress] at the weekends to help finance my first car.” But she tries to see her twin brother, who is also in college in Galway, as often as possible, and her parents and other siblings come up when they can.

She always cooks for herself and mainly lives off chicken, potatoes and pasta. Every once in a while she and friends treat themselves to a takeaway, “which is delivered – a new thing for me”.

Acknowledging how she has become more independent and “responsible” since moving away for college, Deirdre adds: “My friends call me the mother of the group, but I wouldn’t call myself your middle-aged woman stuck in a teenager’s body just yet.”

‘Every time I buy toilet roll by myself, I feel very old’

Cooking has been a huge challenge for Sarah O’Doherty since she left home in Buncrana, Co Donegal, because she professes herself to be “the exact opposite of a domestic goddess”.

For the first two weeks she made nothing but pasta in the four-bedroom student apartment in Santry, Dublin that she shares with three other girls. But she has since progressed to other staples such as chilli and cottage pie.

A communications student at DCU, she was surprised at how happy she was at first to go home every weekend. “But what is equally as surprising is how little I want to go home now. Once I settled in, the desire to go home left and the prospect of spending four hours on a bus home stops me from making the trip.”

While of course she misses seeing her family regularly, she relishes living in the capital. “I love how big it is and how you don’t know anyone. It can be quite liberating being anonymous.”

She agrees that it has made her grow up a bit. “Every time I get a letter from the bank or buy toilet roll by myself, I feel very old. But, in terms of becoming an adult permanently, to be brutally honest, I feel no more ‘adult’ now than I did when I was 10.

“I privately think,” she adds, “that no one really knows what they’re doing and we’re all just winging it.”

‘The freedom to do and be whoever you want’

US-born Elan Richardson-Omamo (19) is surprised how quickly she has adapted to living in student accommodation, in contrast to the struggles she has seen some of her peers face. But then this is not her first time away from home; she went to boarding school in south Dublin.

So although she gets back to the US only twice or three times a year, boarding school gave her a head-start in self-sufficiency. Studying Arts (Economics Politics and Philosophy) in UCD, she has five housemates and pays €700 a month.

While loving “the freedom to do and be whoever you want”, the biggest challenge is feeding herself.

“That’s very tough, especially when I spend my money and forget that I must leave myself something to pay for my food.”

In hindsight, she says a stricter budget plan in the run-up to this phase of her domestic life might have helped. But she reckons she is well on her way to being grown up, adding: “I just need to take more responsibility for the parts of adulthood which I do not enjoy as much as others.”

swayman@irishtimes.com