When I applied to college as a high school senior, I knew I wanted to go to a women’s college -- but I never thought I’d end up at Mills. For one thing, it was nearly three thousand miles from the Philadelphia suburb where I’d spent the last 16 years of my life. I lived less than 10 miles from Bryn Mawr College, one of the Seven Sisters and among the most historic and prestigious women’s colleges in the country. Even if I wanted to go somewhere a little further from home, there were at least a dozen other East Coast women’s colleges a short train ride from Philadelphia. Living close to home meant I could save tons of money on room and board. I would have a guaranteed place to stay if I needed to take a semester off or wanted a weekend-long break from campus. I could have dinner with my dad or take my little sister out for coffee on our way home from the mall. Going to school close to home made sense financially and pragmatically -- it just wasn’t what I wanted.
I come from a very close-knit (dare I say insulated) family, and the prospect of going to college in California was a hard one to sell to my parents. But at 17, I felt like I’d seen enough of the same places to last a lifetime. I wanted out. Mills promised just as high quality an education as any of the East Coast women’s colleges I’d considered, and it was also in a brand new place. California was wide open and untouched; it promised a sense of wholeness and newness that I thought I was lacking. I’ve really enjoyed my experience at Mills so far -- between my wonderful friends and the routine schedule I’ve fallen into with classes and the campus newspaper, I definitely feel like I’m part of a community. But there are more than a few challenges that come with being a college student in a place where you don’t have roots:
1. It's expensive.
Really expensive. Imagine if your college education came with the added expenses of multiple cross-country flights, summer storage, (outrageous) shipping costs and the occasional 3,000 mile road trip. Coordinating the transfer and storage of your belongings over two different places can feel close to impossible sometimes. You’re always forgetting favorite T-shirts and sweaters in one place, and if you leave behind some crucial or sentimental item, you can forget about seeing it until the next break.
2. It can be lonely.
Homesickness is probably the number one fear that most students have when considering a school across the country, and it’s a legitimate one. Airfare prices mean you can’t head home for the weekend if you need a short break from campus -- or just want to do laundry without worrying about your favorite clothes ending up in a heap on the floor in front of the dryer. As a result, you miss things. The hardest for me was missing out on seeing my little sister grow up. When I came home for the summer, I realized she was finally taller than my mom, and I wondered what other milestones of hers I had missed and which others I was going to miss. There are definitely upsides to this, too. Having to rely on the friends you make at school for weekend trips home, rides to the grocery store and places to stay at Thanksgiving makes them more like a second family. Living with my best friends in college has resulted in a profound level of trust and a rapport between us that I never really had with any of my high school friends.
3. You can feel displaced.
If your only real living space is a temporary dorm room, your very location in time and place -- not just your living situation -- can start to feel like just that. In other words, it’s hard to develop a sense of “allegiance” to a particular place if you feel like a visitor. Of course, people go through this all the time. They move for work, for love and yes, for school. But it’s very different as an undergrad, when your “official” home is where you spend summers and breaks, and your “temporary” home is where you spend the bulk of the calendar year. The truly ambitious try to find local area internships and summer housing near campus, but not everyone has the economic resources to do so.
4. The future is uncertain.
Every college grad is nervous about the “drop-off point" that awaits them after finishing their degrees. Cross-country transplant students have the added challenge of deciding to either set down roots in the place they’ve come to call home for four years (which requires securing a place to live and a job immediately after graduation), or to simply move back home. This is the worst part about the “sense of displacement” for me -- not knowing if I should allow myself to get used to this place I’ve really come to love over the last year, since I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to stay after I graduate.
With all this considered, is moving across the country for school really worth it? Honestly, I don’t know. The ultimate cost-benefit outcome is strictly individual; people who need to live closer to home for medical or financial reasons will definitely be better off doing so. I don’t yet know if the benefits I’ve gained in friendships, experience, opportunities and academic resources outweigh the potential cost of job-hunting in a place where I don’t have any immediate family to stay with. If anything, maintaining friendships and family relationships across two coasts has made me more adaptable -- I know that wherever I end up, I can find a way to make it feel like home.
