Most of us know the feeling: when you’re back at school and all you want is to be home with your family again. It can be really hard to go from being at home to being at school. Winter break is the hardest time for me with that. I always find myself coming back to school and it being harder than it was to come back after summer vacation. I think it has to do with the lengths of the breaks, but I just find myself extremely upset about being back without my family to support me. However, through my years as a college student, I’ve found a few ways that help me cope with feeling homesick.
Make Time To Reconnect
One thing I take for granted is my family is seeing each other. We all miss one another when we’re not together, but we don’t do a lot to reconnect once we’re away from each other. That’s why I started to set aside time to call them and reconnect. The frequency will change with each one, some of them being more frequent than others just due to our schedules. However, that doesn’t take away from the importance of talking to all of them at least once a month just to catch up and stay up to date with one another. It makes it more bearable since I don’t feel like I’m constantly missing things and out of the loop, which just adds to the sad feeling for me. While it can still be hard to not physically be there, spending time talking to each of them makes me feel a bit better about it all.
Family Group Chats
One thing that’s closely related to reconnecting is a good family group chat. Sometimes it can be hard to find time to call everyone individually, so a family group chat is my favorite way to stay in contact with everyone when I’m back at school. Over the years, the family group chat has only gotten more and more used — as we’re all starting to be home less with school and jobs. It’s fun to just chat, send pictures of what we’re doing, get suggestions on what to eat, and so on. When I’m texting in my family group chat, it really feels like I’m talking to all of them. It makes it easier for me to not be physically present with them all the time. I will also text in it to see who’s free when I’m in the mood to call someone. It’s a quick and easy way to still have that connection when you’re missing your family and want to hear back from them quickly.
Creating a College Support System
Most of the time, when I miss my family it has to do with the fact that I feel like I’m lacking support in some aspect of my life. Last semester, for example, was a hard one for me since I was so overly booked and was trying to get so much done in such a short amount of time. It got really hard for me to talk to my family as much as I wanted to and I barely went home to see them the entire semester. Luckily, I have a strong support system with my friends here at school, and I was able to talk to them when I was faced with a particularly difficult day or week. It doesn’t replace talking to my mom and having her help me out, but it did give me that support that I felt like I was lacking. If you don’t feel like you have a great support system now, you can reach out to people around you to create a better connection. If you’re part of certain groups, you can start reaching out to members in that group more, or you can talk to those in charge to see if they have time to talk to you for a few minutes. You can also talk to your RA, advisor, or a faculty member you feel comfortable with since they’re all people that are here to help you succeed while at school.
Go Home and Visit
When I first got to school, I felt like there was never going to be a time in the semester where I’d want to go home. I was so ready to start college that going home felt more like a chore than anything. Then school started. I went home at least once a month just to spend time with my family. I really took advantage of a free schedule, and I really miss having that freedom at this point in my college career. Now, I’m lucky if I have more than 12 hours of free time in a week, so going home is not something that I can easily do. That means, when I’m presented with the chance, I jump on it as soon as I can since there is truly nothing that can replace the homesick feeling like a weekend trip back home. It may seem obvious or overly simple, but that’s the beauty in it. You know it’ll be reliable, and you know that you’ll enjoy it.