Going to college can sometimes be a rough transition. You're away from your hometown, your friends from high school, your familiar community, and your family. If you go to a large university such as UGA, you know that coming home when there's so much going on can be difficult. There are football games and sporting events, going out in Athens with your friends on a Friday night, movies playing in Tate, concerts at the Georgia Theatre, and organizational events among many others. If you take that and add it to all of the assignments and homework (which you may or may not have procrastinated until the weekend) from your 15 credit hours, finding time to go home can be difficult.

Some of my friends go home every weekend or every other weekend, but I usually go home once every month to two months. It's not that I haven't wanted to see my family, it's just that I've been having what every college freshman knows as the fear of missing out.

The fear of missing out encompasses social events, activities going on, and (in my case) even includes fear of missing out on a long Saturday study session. I just get so wrapped up and involved in things that it is hard for me to find time to take a break sometimes. But the fact that I don't go home often makes it all that much more special when I do.

Carving out time of your busy college schedule to spend time with your family is so important. Who else is going to give you such knowledgeable advice and treat you to a nice home-cooked meal and watch movies with you and give you hugs? Who else is going to let you have alone time when you need it? Who else is going to want to know everything about what's going on in your life?

What's so amazing about college is that you find your little home away from home, your little second family, your alternate routine and alternate schedule. And it's so easy to get wrapped up in that. And it's also very easy to get so wrapped up in it, so heavily involved in your schoolwork and studies and social events that it becomes too much to bear.

Something I've struggled with for a long time was finding a constant, a rock through the storm, a consistent factor in my life when things would get too wild. Time and time again, I've found that my family is just that.

My family is my rock. My mom's hugs; my dad's random jokes; my brother's stories from school; our family trips and vacations; our discussion of life and world events; our shared nostalgia on past memories; our laughs about some vague thing that happened five years ago; our watching movies together; our heart to heart talks and advice sessions; these are all my rock.

And I totally understand what it's like to feel at odds with your family. Maybe you mistrust them. Maybe they're too hard on you. Maybe you have a split family, or you're not in touch with one of your parents, or maybe you just don't get along with them. Everyone has their own struggles.

But no one will ever be your rock quite like your family will. And when life is difficult and anxiety and stress rage through you day by day and you have an extreme case of the fear of missing out and you feel withdrawn and gloomy and it all is too much to carry, there's one constant place: home. And home isn't a place. It's the people you're with.