Freedom ... or something like it

There's something liberating about knowing that your parents are 3,000 miles away. I never understood the people who drank in their basements in high school or had sex while their parents were in the next room. Unlike them, I was quite sure that if I did any of these things while my mom was in the same state I would get caught. So when I moved across the country for college, the world suddenly seemed ripe with possibility.

Of course, all those things I wasn't supposed to lost a substantial amount of the appeal once there was no one to tell me not to do them, and it didn't help knowing that the cops would do a whole lot more than ground me. But whether you take advantage of it or not, it's quite nice when your parents don't know what you're doing every minute of the day.

Needless to say, when I was on the phone with my mom a few weeks ago, I casually dropped in between discussions of plane tickets and the latest intrigues of the rugby team, that hey, guess what Mom, I have a boyfriend, I didn't exactly expect her response to be: "I know." No, no one had told her — she just knew.

Turns out, those 3,000 miles might as well be three.

I shouldn't be surprised. The first time I tried alcohol I was about 6,500 miles away, in the South of France. How my mom found out is one of the great mysteries of the universe, but she did.

Nonetheless, it's surprising because going away to college seems to inevitably mean that your relationship with your parents will change. Now that you're not living under their roof anymore, they'll never know if you did your homework, that you've come to see your floor as nothing more than a large shelf, or that you've never actually gone to your econ lecture. They're not there to tell you that you might as well go naked for all that your skirt covers or that a diet of cold cereal and coffee probably isn't the way to go. It's liberating, being able to do whatever you want to do and knowing that you're only responsible to yourself. Having more freedom means having more fun.

Of course, it also means more potential to mess up. Suddenly, my mom isn't around to tell me that washing my brand-new red shirt with my whites means I now have to embrace all things pink. When I maxed out my credit card, she wasn't here to fix it. When I had a panic attack over a research paper, I had to settle for being comforted over the phone. The point is that separation means you actually take care of yourself and clean up your own messes. It means that you're an adult.

Which may be the reason why not much really changes. I'm not ready to be an adult. I'm not ready for the real world. I still need my parents as much as I did back in elementary school. People always talk about parents getting separation anxiety and sinking into a state of depression when their babies leave home and go to college, but sometimes I think it's the other way around. How are we, their babies, supposed to function without them? I still call home pretty often, and I text my mom every day. College isn't that much different from high school; there are still the same problems with friends and classes, and I still break my phone every few months and need her to help me. Plus now there's all this new stuff like roommates and laundry. I guess I could probably pull it off without her, but I don't want to. I'm not ready to be an adult.

Not like college is actually the real world — I think of it more like summer camp with grades and counselors who hang out with you instead of enforcing bedtimes. So the situation isn't exactly that grave. But I like having someone take care of me. I like knowing that no matter where I go, there are people who love me, even when they're far away. So frustrating and disturbing as my mom's omniscience is, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Alexis Levinson is a freshman from Los Angeles, Calif. She can be reached at arlevins@princeton.edu.