I’d felt it before: the aching loneliness of being away from familiar faces and places. Coming to Cal Poly, I worried about facing that again. So I did what I could to meet as many people as possible, joining clubs, like Her Campus, so that I could find new friends and a new place here. I wondered how long it would take. Would I graft to a certain group of people really quickly? Would I feel that aching loneliness again for the first few months? Longer?
The answers to those questions were both yes and no.
Yes, I would quickly find my place here—with my dormmates, in my clubs, at my church. And, no, I wouldn’t get that aching lonely feeling.
Homesickness didn’t hit the way I thought it would because it didn’t hit at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I missed my parents, I missed my siblings, I missed my dogs, and I missed my friends from high school. Within the first few days of school, I took a picture of the kinesiology building and sent it to my best friend, studying kinesiology back at home, to try to convince her to come here when she finished community college in two years.
But I wasn’t mourning like other times I’d felt homesick. I was simply remembering all the great things about my previous stage of life, while still being excited for this new stage—I was in a transition stage.
The moment I felt most homesick during college was actually over Spring Break—at home. Driving around my hometown, past my high school and all the spots I’d driven countless times before, thoughts whipped through my mind about the fact that that was no longer my life. I couldn’t go back to my days before college. I found myself struggling to reconcile the fact that I had found comfort in SLO and was okay with leaving my hometown. My hometown was still special, still the place I’d grown up, still where I’d made all my best memories up to that point, but it was different. I saw it as my past, not my present.
At Cal Poly, though, I feel at home. I feel comfortable, like I belong. I found my fit. The transition was astronomically easier than I ever imagined. I remember standing at church one day, surrounded by all my new friends, and marveling at just how quickly I’d stumbled into a home here. The homesickness I was waiting for must’ve been given the wrong address because it never made it to me at Cal Poly. While I’m extremely grateful that it didn’t, I also know that I would have found my place here either way because homesickness is temporary; eventually, wherever you are and whomever you’re with will become your home.