When choosing which college I wanted to go to, I was caught between venturing far away from home and staying close. I didn’t know if I was prepared to not have my family nearby in the event that something went wrong. Ultimately, I chose a college three hours away from my hometown thinking it was going to be the best decision of my life. I was going to be close enough to family and friends from home, I’d be able to visit all the time, and I was never too far away. However there comes a point when you are an out-of-state student where you realize that it was a terrible decision.

Attending school out-of-state is horrible because for eight months out of the year, you are surrounded by your best friends that inevitably become family. You spend every waking moment adventuring with someone, exploring new places in the area, staying up until late hours of the night confessing your life stories, and creating lasting friendships. But while everyone is longing for the semester to end, you don’t want it to because come the end of the semester, you are dragged back home.

But that’s what you wanted. You wanted to be close to home. You chose your school based on how close it was to home. So why do you regret it?

It takes some time, but after a while at college you realize that there’s no other place like it. The freedom of college is something you can’t experience when you are restricted to your hometown. Being at school is unpredictable, exciting, and terrible. You never know what to expect and for that reason you never want to leave. Home is a safe place; it’s a place of comfort and stability. College, especially when attending one out-of-state, forces you to break out of your comfort zone and get to know the world outside of the one you have been sheltered by. It’s scary, yet somehow addicting.

When you take a leap of faith and drop yourself in the middle of an ocean of strangers, you will inevitably attract and meet people you may have never encountered. I can truthfully say that most of my best friends are three hours away from me right now and that is the worst part of it all. While I love my friends and family from home, there’s something about being fully independent and able to run free at college that makes it the most bittersweet experience.

If I could give any one piece of advice to future college students, it would be to take that leap of faith. Go somewhere you don’t know with people you have never met before. There is no better way to find out who you are than to break free from your comfort zone and take away your safety net. Only then can you find the best people you have ever encountered and experience things you never would have otherwise been able to.

Being an out-of-state student is not miserable for me because of reasons you may assume like homesickness and feeling like I can’t find my place; instead, it’s miserable because each winter and summer break, all I want is to be with the people three hours away from me that make me feel like with them, I’m actually home.