College — the time to learn how to be a real adult, and hopefully, a strong, independent individual.

In addition to being a space where you further your academic career, for most, it is the first taste of living alone. College could be the first time you decide what you’re going to eat for every meal, how you are going to spend your days and with whom you are going to surround yourself. 

It may also be the first time you have had to do your own laundry. This poses the question — is it right for students to use Wake Wash to wash their clothing? 

Wake Wash is a service that does your laundry for you and returns it to your dorm. They provide you with a bag to put your clothes in and leave outside your dorm or suite door. Your laundry is then taken to a laundromat, washed, folded and returned to the outside of your door. Wake Wash also offers dry cleaning and housekeeping services.

If you look up “wakewashwfu.com,” the first thing that appears on the screen is a slogan that reads, “College is hard enough. We make laundry easy.”

 I totally agree that college is hard — not just academically — but it is supposed to be hard. It is often referred to as the time in peoples’ lives when they discover who they really are. It is a challenging experience where new skills are gained, such as doing your own laundry.

Believe me when I say that I understand some people are busy. We are all busy. Until I was probably eight years old and learned how to do laundry, my mom and dad did all of my family’s laundry while working six days a week and taking care of three kids. That is what busy looks like. 

I don’t believe that anyone is too busy to take an hour and a half out of their week to do one load of laundry. 

We are fortunate enough at Wake Forest to be able to do our laundry for free at any time when most universities require students to pay to do their laundry outside their tuition bill. By contrast, the cost of using Wake Wash can vary between $265 to $795, depending on which plan you choose. 

While I think that using Wake Wash is lazy and a waste of money considering the free resources we have, my belief that students should do their own laundry runs deeper than that. 

When we leave Wake Forest, we probably aren’t going to be moving in with our parents who will make us dinner and pay the water bill. And we won’t be able to walk to The Pit to get ready-made food. There won’t be custodians to clean our bathrooms, and at some point, we will be completely on our own. That is scary to think about, but it is why we need to be able to rely on and take care of ourselves. 

While having someone else do your own laundry may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, I think it is important to take any steps we can to prepare ourselves for the real world. This is our time to become self-sufficient so that we can be functioning, capable adults. Our parents have done what they can to prepare us for the world, now it is time to take this first opportunity for freedom and prepare ourselves for the world. 

So, as menial as doing laundry can be, next time you need to do a load, think about the deeper meaning — this is an opportunity for you to grow.

Correction April 5: A previous version of this article displayed a typo in the headline. This has since been corrected.