With the weather changing so rapidly this time of year, it’s no wonder that everyone on Pace’s Pleasantville campus has been getting the flu, coughs, colds, and other plague-like symptoms. We’re also in closed quarters, which do not help. Even living in a townhouse we’re around other people all the time and thus can get sick or pass along our sickness while being super careful.

There are several aspects of college that we all have to learn to handle all on our own, and they’re all challenging in different ways. However, one of the biggest adjustments that I’ve noticed on a personal level, and among my friends, is being sick all on our own.

I’m not going to lie right now and say that when I was growing up my mother was ever waiting on me hand and foot when ill. However, just knowing that she was never more than twenty minutes away, that she left me all set up for a day of being sick, and that she’d be home at 6 p.m. to make me soup, was just too comforting.

Now, I have to be a big girl and walk myself down to Kessel to nourish myself, while trying not to infect anyone else. I feel gross, tired, and helpless, but I suck it up. Eating is a requirement.

I can’t just have my mother write a note for when I’m ready to go back to class, like I did in high school. I have projects due, meetings, exams, two jobs, an internship, and online classes that don’t care when I’m sick.

Back in high school, for a day or two, I could put aside the stress of AP exams and SATs (I’ll allow a moment to cry from laughter about how much I thought I was stressed out back in high school) and just let my mom spoil me. On those nights when I was uncomfortable, in pain, congested, and just miserable, both of my parents would just simply be there.

Having any type of illness is annoying enough because it’s something else that we have to take time out of our already busy lives to deal with. It’s also a reminder that we’re not home.

If you’re like me and don’t live super close, (although if you don’t have a car, no matter how close you live, we’re in pretty much the same boat) home seems to be a million miles away. I don’t go home until Christmas and, while bedridden, I wish I were in my own home with my mom in charge of my medicine dosage.

Let me just say that I am twenty-years-old. I’m perfectly capable of doing all of the tea making, the soup buying, putting out the proper medicine dosage, and getting a lot of rest and the whole ordeal that comes with getting myself well again.

There’s just something so lovely though about the woman who loves me the most in this world, taking care of me.

Although I have been very fortunate to have a couple of roommates that would stay with me through it all, or bring me food, it’s just not the same.

I hate to burden other people and it’s basically understood that a child is the given burden to a mother. There is no less stress put on my mother, but I don’t feel as bad about it because I’ve been a burden my whole life.

The process of growing up is filled with these moments of the grin-and-bear-it attitude we all have to have. We mature; we progress and become better people.

I don’t miss my mother any less now, but I’m becoming an adult. I’d like to think that my mother would be very proud.