Summer is over. All those long days and nights spent with your friends at home have all passed. Memories were made, but now it is time to make new ones.
You are now waking up the morning of your flight to some far away place, time is ticking. Your friends squeezing in their last goodbyes, and the next thing you know, you are driving away from your home for the last time, until December. Tears roll down your eyes as it finally starts to hit you that you are leaving for college. Time is ticking even faster now.
You get to the airport, the sound of luggage rolling about fill your head. The smell of morning coffee fills your lungs. And your best friends meet you at the airport to say goodbye and you can't help but sob into their shoulders as you unwillingly step into the Security and Baggage check line.
One last time you wave to the people you love. A friend of mine once told me, "Not only can a place be called home, but people can be home too." & Saying goodbye to your loved ones is probably the most painful thing I have experienced.
Breathing in, I exhaled to calm my emotions. I told myself that this was a start of a new chapter, a new life, and the beginning of a new era. Change is good they say. College is a natural part of your education and it is full of new opportunities and experiences just waiting to happen.
Yes I am going to miss my friends back home, I am going to miss the food back home, and the places, and the familiarity. But deciding to leave San Diego, California to attend the University of Hawaii for the next four years will help me grow not just academically, but as a person as well. Missing home will just make you appreciate things so much more when you get back. Home is never going anywhere, you will come back more successful as ever and get to tell everyone about your journey.
So for those of you starting a new life in a new place, don't worry. I get you if you're feeling homesick, or not homesick. I get you if you're scared, or excited. I get you if you're uncomfortable, or if you feel at home. We all have so much emotion inside of us, we just need to chill. So breathe in, and out, everything will work out in the end! Cheers to new chapters, closing old ones and cheers to college and to the thousands of freshman journeys that will begin this fall.
