So I gave in my dissertation 156 days ago, I received my results 88 days ago, I graduated 74 days ago and I've just finished my twelfth week at my big grown up job. I've lost count of exactly how many weeks I've lived with my boyfriend's parents now, 4 months is an estimate. Time's gone pretty quickly over the past few months, the summer always flies by, but I don't really have a summer anymore. 

I've been up and down when it comes to my feelings towards being a post-graduate. Today marks around 3 years since I myself moved into Hawthorns M Block at Keele and began my student adventure, and that's hit me harder than expected. I think the summer was easy because university still felt like it was around the corner, even though it wasn't. I knew it wasn't really coming but it felt so far away that it didn't really matter. But now that I've finished 3 months of work at my no longer so new job and one of my closest friends from uni has returned without us to complete her final year, I feel that same deflation I felt when I handed over my dissertation, when I finished my very last lecture, when I stepped out of the door of my university house of two years.

The fact is, living with parents makes the transition so much harder in my opinion. If you move straight out into the big wide world, you've got to deal with it. You have to pay your bills and cook your meals. Returning home makes it easy for parents to unintentionally treat you like the child you once were, and it's easy to feel like the house you live in isn't your home. In the case of living with my boyfriend's parents, it really isn't my home anyway. As welcome as they make me I don't feel like this is or will ever by my home, and the boyfriend and I both desperately want a place of our own.

I think that's the only thing that'll make my transition easier. I don't feel at ease when I return home from work, and I think this passing month is probably going to be the hardest for me of all. Another close friend has just started university from day 1, and she's updating me about all the nights out and antics of hungover lectures already and a part of me really does pine for it. 

Four months down the line all I feel is a pull between student life and adult life - neither of which I truly have, but my adult life is something I'm trying hard to work towards. My hope is that once we're up and out the parental home we can actually kick start our life properly. I want to move on from being a student, but when it was so much more fun than being an adult who's not quite yet allowed to be an adult, it's a challenge to let go.

My one wish is that we can all manage to find enjoyment in adult life, despite how horrible everyone told us it was going to be. By no means do I dislike being a grown up, I just don't like not quite being allowed to actually be one when I'm at the same time expected to be - that's the only way I can describe the hotel of mum and dad - if it even makes sense? 

MissIsGoode