Our arms outstretched, our mouths watering, and souls alive with the prospect of new and uncharted territory, we leave our childhood homes and break free from the restraints of our parents, our school careers, and our typically teenage lives.

In high school, my responsibilities were near non-existent. My mother, being the organised go-getter that she is, handled every administrative inch of my life. I was only accountable for my grades, which I kept high to show her my appreciation – they deserved me financial support from my school.

When I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in journalism, I knew that the only place I wanted to be was Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Exotic dreams of curfew freedom, skipping lectures to take the short drive to the Port Alfred beach, and playing my music as loud as I wanted it filled my mind and permeated my every thought until I finally arrived.

Then, everything changed.

The late mornings I had expected were cruelly wrenched from me by “dawnies” – the first lecture of the day – and I was too exhausted to consider late nights with friends, experimenting with our newly found freedom and recent coming-of-age. My schedule quickly filled up with lectures, tutorials, and homework. I joined societies such as the Students’ HIV/AIDS Resistance Campaign (SHARC), and Activate, which is one of our student newspapers.

Being a self-confessed workaholic meant that I packed my schedule as full as I could. My mind was spinning with homework, essays, assignments, articles, interviews, investigations, tutorial exercises, lectures, tests, exams, notes... and after two weeks at Rhodes, I remembered that I had a mother.

A pang of loneliness gripped my chest. I had a hard time making friends in my residence, because I was not particularly interested in or able to go bar-hopping four nights a week. I was frazzled with the effort of trying to administrate my own life, and I longed for her healthy, nutritious meals and her light at the end of the corridor.

Although I experienced some difficulty adjusting to this new, semi-grownup lifestyle, it has been an exciting experience that I would not change for the world... but maybe a slice of my mother’s famous rhubarb pie.

I have learned so much about real life here. I wake up at a modest, responsible hour, and I take care of my own physical nourishment as the day progresses. I attend (almost) all lectures, because I am not especially interested in ‘learning the hard way’. I actively participate in my student newspaper and setting my own life goals, and achieving them, has given me an immeasurable sense of pride and purpose.

Although I do not have my own home comforts here, I have developed some routine and comfort and feel relatively at home. Above all, I have become confident in my ability to spread my wings and fly (some could argue that I fled) from my mother’s warm, soft embrace and swoop high above the world, taking it all in and finally staking out a part of this confusing, dazzling world as my own.

About the author: Kayla is currently a first-year Journalism and Media Studies student at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She writes for student newspaper Activate under the Politics, Business, and Opinions sections, and she is also a sub-editor. Her other subjects are Economics, English, History and Sociology. She devours books. She is also one of the blessed few who enjoy working. She is involved with SHARC (Student HIV/AIDS Resistance Campaign) at Rhodes and is busy with a course in Peer Education. She loves watching art films and her guilty pleasure is shopping.

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Comments (1)

• |2010-08-14 13:55:53 Erna Buber-deVilliers  - Fly
  Written with such verve and joie de vivre - makes me wish I were a student again.
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