Student journalist Josh O'Kane explores the ultimate crisis: Leaving his parents' basement.

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Graduating from high school gives you more than just a piece of paper; it also presents you with an existential crisis. Your independence isn't granted immediately at that moment. As I discovered, it can really only be fully acquired once you finally move out of your parents' place.

I treated this existential crisis like a matter of life and death, and in the end I settled for life and debt.

One thing was for certain when I was handed that piece of paper for high school graduation: I was an adult, and as such, if I wanted to go to university I would be paying for it myself.

Thus, the existential crisis was an overbearing one.

A slew of questions presented themselves. Should I leave home and explore the world? Would the financial burden from doing so make it worthwhile?

I was more than welcome to stay at my parents' place. Though their offer was kind, it was also a difficult one to accept. Not paying for rent sounded ideal, but it also meant that life after high school would stay pretty much like high school.

And that's exactly what happened, at first.

I stayed home for a year. UNB Saint John became my home campus, and I commuted there everyday in my parents' gigantic, gas-guzzling Mercury Grand Marquis. University courses were OK, but I found myself in a situation far too much like high school "" the commute there, the classes, and the commute home. I met relatively few new people, and it just seemed like life never really changed.

It's not that I didn't like UNBSJ. It's not that I didn't like my parents.

It's that I went home every night to my parent's house, sat on the couch and did nothing but homework and watch TV. A lack of motivation came over me as I went home every night "" though my parents were welcoming and loving, something was just missing.

I soon learned there's a certain group of things that you just can't do in your parents' house.

Coming home from a bar or party, for instance, is at best awkward. Being put to bed by a friend after a long, hard night is a true showing of friendship.

In contrast, being put to bed by your mother or father at the age of 19 or 20 seems counter-intuitive to anything in anyone's mind about parenting. I've managed to avoid such situations, but I've sure felt bad for other folks.

The university experience also seems incomplete when you spend your first week mingling with people your own age "" and then go home to hang out with your parents at 5 p.m. It's just strange. When I first pictured university life, I pictured ridiculous dorm parties "" not hanging out with my parents watching sitcoms. Mom, Dad, I love you, but that's not exactly what I pictured doing when I grew up.

Sure, there were things to do "" on weekends, sometimes "" but being stranded on the east side of Saint John, often without a car, brought on a feeling of isolation when I could have been surrounded by hundreds of other students in a residence, or at least somewhere closer to people my own age.

One of my roommates provided further context for the argument of growing up and getting out.

"You can't have a guest appear at breakfast at your parents' house. It's just awkward." Well put.

By the end of my first year, I'd had enough. Living with my parents had saved me some money but I convinced my parents to let me get a student loan, and I booked it to Fredericton. I discovered life and debt "" new places, new faces, and a crippling financial burden.

Maybe your parents are rad. Maybe your parents are cool. That didn't matter to me. Being on my own "" as on my own as living in a residence was, anyway "" was a rite of passage that I longed for, despite the overbearing debt that went with it.

Only recently did I have the revelation that I'm going to have to pay off that debt. My solution? I took a fifth year of school and put off worrying until later.

We'll see how that goes.

Josh O'Kane is the editor-in-chief of The Brunswickan, UNB Fredericton's student paper. Once upon a time he was arts editor at UNBSJ's paper, The Baron, but he didn't like writing stories under deadline pressure from his mom.