Alright, listen up. You either are, have been, or will be homesick while away at college. I’m here to tell you that it sucks, but you’ll figure it out and forget it ever happened.
My first semester of college was filled with tears that longed for home and outburst of sadness at the slightest mention of anything that even remotely reminded me of home. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m one of the most overdramatic and emotional people I know, but I felt like nothing would ever be normal as long as I was away at school.
But here I am, almost halfway through my second semester – which I didn’t even think I’d be at this school for – and I’m loving it. Everyone talks about how to beat homesickness but rarely do I hear about what college is like right after you get over homesickness. Personally, I feel like I’m on top of the world.
The comfort that comes from calling a place home makes life so much easier. Once I started calling my dorm my home there was a significant change in how I saw my college experience. Once Boston became my home away from home, my whole outlook on college went from “college is a drag” to “college is an opportunity.”
There is nothing quite like living alone for the first time and enjoying it. The pressures that the first-semester freshman have eventually die down. There’s a routine to when you do your laundry, when you see friends, when you talk to your mom, and where you study.
Finding my favorite study spots on campus, seeing the same cashier every morning while I grab a granola bar for breakfast, meeting the same friends for dinner, and having just enough time between my two afternoon classes to watch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy made me realize that it was the little things that count the most.
College is an amazing opportunity once you find small comforts in your daily activities. You’ll find yourself maturing at a rapid pace if you take a second and evaluate your decisions. Suddenly you are about to turn 19 and thinking about where in the world you want to study abroad when just a few months ago you were sure being 200 miles away from home was going to be the death of you.
You find yourself enjoying the time you have to yourself – whether it be time spent doing work alone or time spent walking around campus. It feels different now, it is no longer that you feel lonely, it is now that you feel independent.
You understand that there will be days that just suck. For some reason, there will be days that you don’t want to get out of bed but you also don’t want to be in your dorm bed. Those days will pass and you realize it’s okay to miss a class every now and again to sleep a little or do some shopping. Soon enough it will be graduation day and you are going to wonder where all four years went, there will be smiles, tears, and fears, that day all based on what you do now. So, live the life you want to in college and enjoy every single second.
My heart is most definitely in my hometown on Long Island, but right now, I’m taking a short vacation and loving every single second of this chaos we call college.
Cover photo via GSU.edu
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