For thousands of college students across the country, college is a time to celebrate your newfound adulthood and finally fly the nest. Students on the Eastern Seaboard often dream of the swaying palm trees and sunny beaches of California, and Midwestern students fantasize about the bright lights and booming sky-scrapers of New York City. Either way, these students all want to leave one thing: home.

And I completely understand this desire. After living in one place for the first 18 years of your life, it is completely natural and understandable to want to experience something new. After spending my childhood nestled in a quiet suburb, I find myself with a giant urge to travel and see what the rest of the world has to offer. Heck, even the United States is so vast that you can enjoy everything from snowy mountains to the famous amber waves of grain without getting a passport.

However, when it comes to choosing the place to spend the next four years of your life, there are a lot of things to consider besides adventure. This is a place where you are going to live and work as hard as you have ever worked before for four (or even five) long and tiresome years. Of course you have a lot of fun in college, but it is ultimately a place where you go to get a good job.

Most of us have lived in the same place for most of our lives before this point, so we should not underestimate the challenge that adjusting to college will be. You will be thrust into a minuscule space with complete strangers, and embark on rigorous academics. This is a time when support from your family is as critical as it has ever been.

College is also about finding yourself, and what you truly want from life. The average college students switches their major five times, so there is a lot of internal struggles that go into finding out what you truly are meant to do. This can all be overwhelming, since up to this point you have only had to focus on school. So clearly, college is a lot.

For me, being close to home was critical in getting through my first year. Adjusting to college was difficult nonetheless, but being near the people who love me the most gave me the support I needed to do well and navigate my first year as calmly and efficiently as possible. Being close to my dog didn't hurt as well, because he is my baby and leaving him would be the equivalent of a dagger to the heart.

Also, and this is purely personal to me, I like my stuff. I am a creature of habit, and I don't like much change. My idea of fun is going to Target and Barnes and Noble with my folks, not drinking beer and dancing at wild parties. I like going to MY chick-fil-a, MY dairy queen, MY mall. I think you get the point.

You might be completely different from me, and maybe your hometown doesn't hold a special place in your heart as it does for me. But, don't underestimate the challenges of living away, and adjusting to this crazy time in our lives that is college. Think long and hard about where you want to go, and don't move far away just for the sake of it. You know what they say, there's no place like home.