College students experience a certain phenomenon the first couple years that they’re away at school. It hits hard when we're approaching the holidays and winter break. It comes to people in different ways, some may not be as intense as others, but I believe everyone goes through a little bit at some time in their college career. We all feel homesick at one point or another, but have you ever gotten back home just to want to go back to school a few days later?
It’s something that’s hard to deal with, it almost feels like because we really have two places live, our dorm/apartment at school and our parent's house, we really don’t have one place to call our real home. Neither feels permanent because neither is permanent. How do we deal with that?
This entire transition is hard. We do it our freshman year by moving away from home, in some cases states away, into a tiny room with a roommate we may or may not like. We have to adjust to an entirely different schedule than what we’re used to, different professors, teaching methods and more homework that we alone are responsible for. The next year, we typically are moving out of the residence halls into our first apartments. It’s the most on our own we’ve ever been. It’s on us to get out of bed, sometimes drive to classes, and then we have to actually grocery shop and feed ourselves. We’re turning into adults. That leaves us searching for something familiar and comforting. Our mind goes back home and romanticizes the idea of it. But once we physically get there, we’re once again vying for the independence that we had grown accustomed to, which in its own way is comforting. It’s a confusing and difficult cycle to go through.
What I’ve started to realize is that “home” is more of an idea rather than a place. This has been said before and may come off cliché, but once you start to go through this and then look at that cliché as a possibility, you can be surprised at how accurate you find it. On the one hand, we love and miss our families. Yet on the other, we can barely make it through a week without our friends at school. I love my family more than anything and wherever they are is where I know I will always feel at home. That doesn’t negate the fact that my close-knit group of friends here at school makes me feel just as at home. So instead of looking at it as if you don’t have one real home, realize the fact that you have two, albeit different, real homes. And that is perfectly okay.
