Every movie involving an eighteen year old girl heading off to college shows her packing up her life, loading up the car and heading off to another state to start her new life. They make it seem like an almost seamless transition. You head off to college and instantly become best friends with your roommate and fall for the first boy that you accidentally bump into on move-in-day. You have that one professor that you think it ridiculous, but by the end of the semester he's become your favorite professor because he was only tough on you because he believed in you. So, every eighteen year old girl starting college in the real world assumes that things are going to be just like the movies, and then they get to this strange new land and they realize that it's nothing like the movies. Instead, it's a struggle (it's definitely worth the struggle, but it's a struggle all the same).

1. Homesickness

When you're three or more hours from home, it becomes a little hectic to head home for random weekends just because it's Homecoming or your grandma's birthday or there's an uncle visiting from out of town. Instead, you get to go home for Thanksgiving and Easter and Christmas. If you have your own car on campus and a course load that isn't totally crushing you, you can sacrifice six or more hours a weekend to head home (knowing that you aren't going to get as much work done at home as you would at school), but realistically speaking, you're probably only going to go home on long weekends, even if you have the luxury of driving yourself. That means that you get even more homesick than the rest of your friends. Watching all of your fellow graduates posting pictures to Instagram and updating their snapchat stories Homecoming weekend kills you, even though you were so glad to be free of high school just a few months before. The lame Sunday night dinners that you always rolled your eyes through and tried to get out of attending seem like a lost tradition that you miss like crazy (especially because the food was so much better than dining hall food). All in all, knowing that your visits home are so infrequent makes you miss it just a little bit more.

2. It's a Cultural Shock

You wouldn't imagine it, because you're just crossing a few state lines, but you're entering a totally different world. Coming from baseball-crazed, upstate New York, entering Patriots Country New England seems like another planet. Tom Brady is like a cultural icon, girls order their iced coffees inside a hot coffee cup, (and they call it Dunks), and restaurants like Buffalo Wild Wings or Texas Roadhouse are fan-favorites. Oh, and when there's a Patriots game on a Sunday, expect the common rooms to be packed and the shouts to be heard no matter where you are on campus.

3. Care Packages

You end up getting a ton of care packages, because your family is in constant fear of you blowing through your funds when you're hours away. So, mom and dad send you anything that you mention you're running low on and grandma calls to ask if you need anything. Which means that you end up leaving school with more stuff to pack up than you came with, because everything is so fast to make sure that you're living comfortably. It even saves you from having to go to the grocery store, because your family makes sure you're being taken care of.

4. Visits From Parents Are Exciting

Because your family probably only visits a few times a year, you end up eagerly awaiting their arrival rather than dreading it. When they come, you've got a ton to show them and a ton to tell them. And, because they're convinced you've been going months without a home-cooked meal, you get a free dinner out. Sometimes, they even bring you your favorite foods from home so that you can have a "home-cooked" meal after they head back home. This is especially handy when you're favorite meal is something that doesn't exist outside of your hometown. (How have other states not heard of chicken riggies????)

5. FOMO

Whenever you return home, you want to spend every single second doing something with your friends, or with your family. Because, when you're at school, you miss out on everything. Your response is a strong desire to fill a week long trip home over Thanksgiving or Spring Break with a month's worth of memories. If you aren't doing something every second that you're awake when you're home, you feel like you're wasting time. You practically live at your best friend's house and your parents tell you constantly how they feel like they didn't get to see you when you were home, but you've got far too many people to see to spend even an hour at home. As a result, your life seems way more exciting and you head back to school with an arsenal of stories.

6. College Friends

Chances are, most of the people that you go to college with are from the state your college is in or the next state over. Your group of friends probably lives close enough to one another that they can visit each other over breaks without it being some huge ordeal. Which means that the feelings you had of missing out on things with your friends at home transfers over to your friends from college, because now you're away from them for three months straight. And it's really hard to convince your parents to let you head off to stay with your college friends when they've been missing you for the entire year that you spend with your new friends.

7. Friendships

Honestly, going to college out of state is going to show you who your real friends are more than anything else in the world. The people who drop everything when you call them or rush to call you back as soon as they have a free second outside of their own work or school schedule are the friends who miss you so much they long to hear your voice and panic slightly when you actually make a phone call instead of just texting then, assuming that something is wrong automatically. The ones who work out their schedule and plan a weekend out to visit you are the ones you know you can count on, because they probably had to drop multiple other plans to make it happen. And the ones who turn up on your doorstep the second you update your snapchat story with your local snapchat filter, showing that you're home are the friends who care the most, because they're the ones who want to make the most of every second that they have with you, even if it means kidnapping you for the entire weekend you're home or tagging along to every family event you're supposed to attend.