The college years are regarded as a critical period for students’ growth and accomplishment. Different university students make their own choices about whether to live away from home when being educated. From my perspective, the decision of leaving home certainly brings more benefits than drawbacks.
Admittedly, university students’ living away from home may, to some extent, lead to family alienation. It seems clear that the long distance easily breeds the estrangement considering that family members are all engaged in their own schedule, especially those young people who are readily involved in the fresh and brilliant college life. Therefore, it is the lack of timely effective communication that is likely to result in distant family relationship, exacerbating the sense of loneliness among university students when losing the company and support from family members.
However, we should not ignore the potential benefits for university students’ growth when they choose to leave the shelter of family. For one thing, college students can seize the opportunity to develop interpersonal skills, which can be a strong edge during the future fierce competition. Living away from home creates tremendous chances for students to communicate with peers instead of spending a huge amount of time on meaningless household affairs, which means students will gradually improve communication, problem-solving and cooperation abilities in the miniature community, laying a good foundation for later integration into the society. For another, individual independence can be stimulated and thus cultivated when living far from home, which can be considered as a symbol for adult identity. Once the awareness of being independent is generated among college students, the skills, from handling problems by themselves to making judgements independently can be mastered progressively.
In conclusion, for university students, living away from home exerts more positive impacts on the development of interpersonal skills and autonomy, although they should also pay attention to maintaining close family bonds.