As a college freshman, leaving home can have two responses: the feeling of utter bliss and excitement, or the feeling of dread and anxiety. Being close to my family, I felt a nice mixture of the two. I have always wanted to be on my own and be able to prove myself, but the bond I have with my family made it hard to want to leave. Of course, the time came when I had to pack up and go, and my final goodbyes were said. I have been away from home for approximately five weeks and two days as of Monday, September 23.
Coming to college, I had no idea what to expect. I was a first-generation college student with no common knowledge of what universities had except for what I had preconceived from movies. Once I got here though, I quickly learned. The first thing I learned was that making friends is harder than it was in high school. College is a much more substantial place. With 23,000 people at MTSU, I see people on a daily basis that I may never see again. That makes it hard to make friends, and it can be extremely lonely.
Another thing that I realized after being away from home was that homesickness is real, and that I am not as grown up as I may have thought. Talking to my mom on a daily basis is a habit that I have gained since moving two hours away, and I often visit home. When I got here, I knew it would be a hard adjustment, but I did not anticipate it being this difficult.
My first visit back home was Labor Day Weekend to surprise my parents, which was a success. My dog now has a shirt to cuddle with when he misses me, and my grandfather got to see me for three days straight, but that made coming back to school just that much harder. Leaving again felt like the first day I left home all over again. I had to readjust to being away again, and it threw away all of the progress I had previously made. I was just as lonely and scared as when I had started school, if not more, because now I knew that I could just go home anytime I pleased. I was scared that I would not be able to control myself and just leave one night for the life I knew once knew.
While I was able to grow out of that fear, it brought up another unexpected: free time. I had too much of it. All I did was go to class, eat, do homework, and sleep. This left me with about five hours of nothing to do on a daily basis. How can you combat that when you are still trying to acclimate to a new place? Well, for starters, you join a club, and that is exactly what I did.
I found Her Campus through an email. It sounded like an amazing opportunity, and I did not even have to finish reading the email to know that it was the place for me. I quickly joined the GroupMe and joined as a writer and the Co-Events Director. I plan on becoming the president of the HerCampus at MTSU Chapter one day, but for now, I think that being a writer is just fine.
One last thing I did not expect was the idea of home. I did not expect MTSU to feel like a home for a good while, but things started looking up for me when I made friends in HC and my classes. I have an amazing roommate, Mariah, who has been there with me through it all, and I have everything I could possibly need within walking distance. When I came here to tour the campus last fall, I already knew that I would be here within the next year, but I did not really comprehend that it would be my home. I viewed MTSU as a big, scary place that I would be lost in forever, but I was able to help tourists actually find where they were heading today. Growth is always lurking, and honestly, it is nice to look back and see how far I’ve come in such a short amount of time.
Coming to college can emit emotions from opposite sides of the spectrum, but as my first month as a freshman comes to an end, I have realized that my family is not going anywhere, and that I can flourish unapologetically. I am not missing much at home, and the only thing holding me back is myself. As my final goodbyes were said, I did not know what to expect from this campus, but now that I am here, I can share that the hard times are worth it to get to the good ones.