Student Exchange Programs

I met my boyfriend in March of last year at my high school in Massachusetts. I was a senior and he was a junior. When I started dating him I’d already made my decision for fall semester to go to SAIC, which is an art school in Chicago.
Lord knows how, but I fell in love with him almost instantly. When summer came we spent every single day together. He turned my entire world around. Everything I wanted for myself changed.
The five months I spent away from him in Chicago were absolute hell. I missed him so much I could barely function. I’d completely forgotten what it was like to be happy. I did well in my classes only because working hard took my mind off of the pain of missing him. All of my free time I devoted to skyping him. I made friends there because I knew I should, but no close relationships. It sounds bad but I didn’t enjoy spending time with any of them because I was so depressed from being away from my boyfriend.
On top of all of this, my career goals completely
shifted. It didn’t take much time for me to realize that you don’t have to go to a conceptual art school to be a contemporary artist. I mean, honestly, I’d be more likely to find Basquait passed out in a dumpster than walking around the Art Institute of Chicago. The chances of making it in the art world are slim to none. Basically, when your living in an apartment with a Chinese exchange student who doesn’t speak a word of English at a school that offers no meal plan, **** gets real. You’re making your own food, cleaning your own bathroom, and slowly realizing you don’t want to be eating ramen noodles for the rest of your life. You need money in the world to survive and you’re not going to get that with a BFA and thousands of dollars of debt from student loans going to the most expensive art school in America.
So I finished my first semester, and went home for the next semester to think things over. Now that I’m home, I see my boyfriend almost every day.
I’m looking to get a part time job and I’m taking day classes at my local community college to figure out what I want to do with my life. Right now I’m thinking teaching or maybe nursing, neither of which are particularly high paying, but both are steady jobs that I think I would enjoy.
My boyfriend and I looked at colleges together while I was in Chicago and was in the process of changing my mind about…well, everything. Originally he was planning to come to Chicago with me, but after I decided I wasn’t coming back we both looked at schools that would fit for both of us.
We both really like Queens University of Charlotte, which is a small private school in North Carolina. They have a pretty good nursing program, and education department, and they also have a music therapy program, which my boyfriend is interested in. My boyfriend has already gotten in and I’m hopeful that I will too, but even if I do there’s still another huge obstacle I have to
overcome to get to Queens…
And that’s my parents. They think that going to college with my boyfriend is going to distract me from gaining my independence, and shaping myself into an adult. My best friend agrees with them too, saying I won’t be able to form other relationships if I spend all of my time with my boyfriend. He suggests I go to a college close to his, but not the same college.
I see their points and their concerns. I really do spend all of my free time with my boyfriend and I really am completely dependent on him for happiness and success. And that’s scary as hell for them.
But I don’t think they realize how scary it is for me too. It’s scary as ******* hell to love someone as much as you love yourself. Knowing that whatever happens to them happens to you too. If one day you wake up and they’re gone, half of you get taken away too. In a way, it makes you twice as vulnerable. But what can I do about it honestly? He’s a part of me now, and I know
20 minutes ago
when I say that, you’re going to tell me I’m young and naive and in twenty years we probably won’t be together and I’ll look back and laugh at that ridiculous high school romance I had that one time. But you’re just going to have to believe me when I say he IS a part of me, and I just can’t live without him and be happy at the same time.
Even with all of this aside, Queens is a great opportunity for me. I can get everything I need academically and more. It’s a tight knit community and that’s one of the things that was missing from SAIC that I didn’t like. Both me and my boyfriend want to travel and Queens has one of the best study abroad and internship programs in the U.S.
It’s honestly perfect, and my life would be so much easier if my parents just supported me on this decision…what do you think I can say to get them on my side? I live in Massachusetts so they don’t see why I should go far when there are a lot of good schools here, but honestly, I’m sick