Moving across the country to go to school is hard, it's even harder when you don't know anyone.
1. Seeing your family a few times a year
You get to go home during Christmas, Summer break, and if you're lucky Thanksgiving or Spring Break. It costs a lot to fly across the country, on top of that the cheapest and most efficient length of a trip tends to be from 7-10 days. Which isn't worth all of the headaches of flying, especially during the busy times. It gets hard to be away for so long when everyone else brags about going home almost every other weekend. However, this just means you're able to cut the cord of dependency a little quicker.
2. Missing family events
Not being able to make it home every few weeks or months, like your friends that live less than 24 hours away, also means you get the excuse of missing the same boring family event. The one where there's really no purpose for the event, it's just another excuse for everyone to get together, talk about the weather, and the same old stories you've heard every year. However, sometimes you just want to be back home where the regularity is almost soothing. When you're grandparents are close to knocking on death's door, it's hard to be across the country.
3. School Breaks
The dreaded three day or week long breaks aren't really exciting when you're stuck in the same dorm room or apartment and not attending classes. If you're stuck in a small town, hours away from the city, it's worse. During those breaks, you learn to find a second home. Either it's with a friend and they kind of adopt you into their family or you find a place downtown that you end up treating as a "home away from home". It breaks up the monotony and allows you to see the different cultures.
4. Minimalism lifestyle
Whether you wanted to join the lifestyle or not, you inevitably get swept up into because you only have so much space moving to and from college. If you're flying, you have the amount of one or two 50 lb suitcases. If you decided to brave the drive across multiple states, you at least have a little more room but it's still confined to space in your vehicle. You learn quickly what is valuable to your needs and transportation situations. Your dorm room is usually very bare in the first semester or year in school.
5. Transportation
Anyone who lives closer to their school is most likely to get a car with the help of their parents or by earning it. When you live farther away, your first year really tests your patience by depending on others for transportation. It's always a struggle to decide if you should bring a car out your first year or not. Some schools are nestled in the town that the need of a car is pointless, then there are some that are just on the outskirts causing you to rely on others. If you give on relying on them, because you got sick of being dragged everywhere when you just wanted to go to one place, you then have to face the drive from home to school. That can be brutal or somewhat decent.
6. Socializing
If you're coming from across the country to school, it's safe to say that it's just you from your high school. It becomes hard to break into some groups at college because it's been them since they were in elementary school. You jump from group to group trying to find your way into one of them. Your first group inevitably becomes the group of all out-of-state students trying the exact same thing. It becomes exhausting meeting new people and going through the same rituals over and over again. Thank God when you hit your second year, you just spend most of your time with people in your major. It becomes easier.
7. Learning to fit in
If you're coming from one coast to the other, there are different names, brands, and stores. For awhile, you can't escape the obvious questions about your home state or how things are done on that side. For example, if you're from the east coast and you end up in the west coast, you're most likely used to blizzards, honking your horn, dropping R's in words, having a slight accent, drinking Dunkin Donuts, and not wearing socks with Birkenstock. Granted it's different up and down both coasts, but each side is more associated with one thing lifestyle. East coast is fast pace, while the West comes off more laid back for starting a lot of trends. Blending in isn't the problem, it's fitting in just enough that conversations don't always start with "what's it like there?" or "Why did you come out here?" or hearing "you should be used to because you're from that state."
8. Starting over
When you move away, everything that happened in high school doesn't matter now. You get a fresh start. You don't have to watch your high school girlfriend/boyfriend find someone new. You don't have the weight of your mistakes hanging over your head. You can be the opposite of who you were in high school because no one knows you. No one knows anything, so you can make an impression in being the best at whatever you aced back at home or make a change. No one will be the wiser.
