- My 18-year-old daughter starts college as a freshman this summer.
- It will free up her bedroom, which I'd planned to turn into my home office.
- I changed my mind because I needed more time to accept her leaving home.
Like any other proud family, we celebrated when our 18-year-old daughter was accepted into one of her chosen colleges in February this year.
She is fiercely independent and has wanted to study outside our home state of New York since middle school.
She can't wait to move into a dorm — she's already found her roommate on a student-matching app — and hopes to join a sorority.
It will be a rite of passage when my husband and I drop her off at university in August. A bittersweet goodbye.
The flight from the nest will mark the start of a whole new chapter, not only for her but also for me, her dad, and her younger brother, as we adapt to life without her.
I planned to turn her room into a home office
It will feel strange not to have a fourth place at the kitchen counter and not to hear her news every day.
One good thing was that the change would free up space in our house, including in the kids' bathroom, which my 15-year-old son longed to have to himself.
Meanwhile, I planned to take over my daughter's bedroom, which was now available to me as a home office.
I worked out of my bedroom, where my desk was exactly two-and-a-half feet from my bed. It might have been a hop, skip, and a jump in the morning, but it was claustrophobic.
I felt I needed two monitors to do my job more productively. But one of them was gathering dust in the garage because there's no place for it.
Family and friends sent congratulations
The room was much darker and colder than my daughter's, and received only a little light at the back of the house. It seemed like a no-brainer to move.
I went online to look for a bigger desk and office chair. I thought I'd be more efficient in a more professional-looking environment.
Decision day came on May 1. Our senior had already accepted her place, but I felt emotional when she drove to school wearing merchandise from her new college.
She let me post a photo on Facebook of her wearing the hoodie. Family and friends sent congratulations. It suddenly felt real that our little girl was about to leave home.
Something made me walk into her bedroom and sit down. I gazed at the pictures of Paris, her favorite city, on the walls and the stuffed animals who'd seen better days.
I wanted to maintain the status quo
There were half-burned scented candles on the dresser and a whiteboard with a list of past exams propped up against the window.
Random clothes and damp towels were strewn all over the place, but the mess didn't bother me for once. I caught the lingering smell of her perfume.
In that moment, I changed my mind about moving my office into her room. Although it would have been practical, I wanted to keep things as they were.
I had been too hasty in trying to move forward. I've given myself time and grace to see what's coming next.
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Jane Ridley is a correspondent on the Life team at Business Insider.She was a senior features writer at the New York Post from 2012 to 2022 and previously worked at the New York Daily News for six years.Ridley was born and raised in the UK. She arrived in the US in 2005. She moved across the Atlantic after spending seven years at The Daily Mirror in London.
