As a longtime veteran of and participant in a split custody agreement between two parents, it is hard for me to judge its effects on my academic life and performance.

Life with two houses is the only thing that I have ever known.

My parents split before my academic career began, so I have been managing the constant transitions that come with living in a split custody arrangement since prekindergarten.

For me, the transitions have always been the biggest challenge of having divorced parents. To have to pick up and move between houses day in and day out presents a complication, both academically and socially, that people with a single house arrangement do not have to deal with.

Transitioning between houses is the proverbial monkey wrench in the works of staying academically organized. In my 13 years of transitioning between houses, I have experienced the moment of panic that occurs when you realize that you left some key element of your work at school or at another house far more than any person should.

For the already chaotic and precarious academic life of a student at the high school, having to transition between two houses and between two parents simply adds more entropy to the already disorderly system.

I think that the idea of adding one more variable to an already confusing equation sums up what living with divorced parents does to a student’s academic performance. Some people struggle with it and some people figure it out quickly. For others it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

In my case, I’m not really sure what it has done to me. Positive? Negative? Or somewhere in between? Living with two houses is something that I’ve always known, so I’m not sure if I’ve solved the problems that it has posed or not.

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