The author is a full-time student and resident assistant at Keuka College, and is interning at The Spotlight.
Though no college student would ever admit to it, leaving home for the first time is as turbulent an experience to them as it is to their families and loved ones. The stress of moving away from home, of starting a new life independent of mom and dad and especially of sharing a small room with someone who’s essentially a stranger, is something that can be pressing on the minds of new college students.
To some students, the stress of being in a new situation can be detrimental during their first semester of college. Many who experience this end up returning home, either often or permanently, leaving their school behind them. While some students may leave a school because they can’t afford it anymore or because they have been slacking in their academics, the main reason college freshman leave is a simple, old-fashioned case of homesickness.
Many of my former classmates have gone through this sort of experience, some of them people I would have never expected. Yet, when I asked them what they used to do at school, I received one common answer almost every time: “I sat in my room.”
Transitioning to college was as difficult a time for me as it is to any other college student leaving home for the first time. For the first week of my college career I was homesick to the point of hardly being able to eat anything. A girl, who I’d met during orientation, noticed I was having a rough time and gave me some suggestions on what to do. She told me she was trying out for the school play and that I should too. I thought to myself, why not? The worst that would happen is I wouldn’t get a part, right?
It turns out, the worst that could happen didn’t, and I did get a part in the play. Through rehearsals and eventually the show I made my group of friends at college that helped me overcome my homesickness.
Being able to go out and experience something new can be a challenge to many new college students and graduating seniors getting ready for college. In my case it took a friendly wager and a bit of luck. However, there is one thing that can make it easier on those who are transitioning, a golden window of opportunity that is entirely unique to the college lifestyle. It is in the first two weeks of starting at a new college that you can walk up to a group of strangers, introduce yourself, and walk away with new friends. The reason is that all new college students are looking for friends, everyone is searching for their niche and just about everyone misses home in some capacity.
Students who have told me that they simply sat in their rooms all day, the ones who felt alone and homesick and thus left their schools, are the students who missed out on those golden two weeks without borders between people. They are the students who didn’t get out and challenge their comfort zones, didn’t tackle new experiences and ultimately didn’t beat their homesickness.
What many people forget is that homesickness is an entirely normal thing to experience when taking those first tenuous steps out of the family home, but it doesn’t take a trip home to cure it. In fact, leaving for the weekend is something that, when done often, can lend to making feelings of homesickness worse. Many major parts of college social life occur on weekends and leaving to go home causes students to miss out and become excluded from the rest of their peers. A simple phone call can be just as effective in eliminating feelings of homesickness as a trip home can and is much less disruptive.
The best advice anyone can offer to college students struggling to adjust, or to recent high school graduates nervous about leaving home, are these tips:
• Challenge yourself to do something new as often as you can. You never know when you’ll find something you’ve never done before that you end up liking a lot.
• If you are in your dorm room, leave the door open (unless the situation warrants otherwise). This invites people to come in and get to know you — a person’s room tells a lot about them.
• Finally, don’t forget to enjoy yourself. While academics are a vital part of college life, getting to live on your own is a major part in itself. College can be the best time of your life, if you push yourself to experience it.