Claire:
Homesickness is a common experience for college students to experience throughout their transition of moving away from home for the first time. Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us are used to spending a lot of time at home very close to our family, so the transition over the past few years has been tough. As a former counselor at a sleep-away summer camp, I can tell you with 100% certainty that distraction is the best way to overcome homesickness. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, the best thing to do is go out. It doesn’t matter if you’re just going on a quick walk or to lunch with friends, but just get yourself out of your room and out of your head. Once you’re feeling better, you can call someone from back home or maybe even take a weekend trip back home if that’s possible. For me, the hardest thing is realizing the difference between when I’m homesick versus when I need to change something about my living situation. If you’re feeling homesick, try changing something about your room to make it more familiar and comfortable. You could bring a blanket from your childhood or some pictures of the things and people you enjoy. It could also help to reorganize your space so that you feel more in control of it. If all else fails and you don’t feel better after all of this, let yourself be sad. You’ll get through this; it will only get easier to live away from home.
Ethan
As the weather gets colder and it has been around two months since you have last seen your family, you may begin to get homesick. This is a normal part of the college experience that most students will have to manage because this is the first time they are living away from home for an extended amount of time. There are ways to deal with homesickness, so I am going to do my best to give you a couple of options. One way to deal with the feeling of missing home is to make plans and efforts to visit your home when you need to. Some of you might not be from an area where you can just travel home for the weekend and are also curious as to how you can deal with your homesickness. I would recommend sucking it up and doing a better job considering the location in which you choose to attend college next time. You probably thought you made a great choice getting as far away from your parents as possible, but it has come to bite you. The advice for this week is that your choices have consequences. The nicest way to put it is that if you don’t live in New Jersey or NYC, you have brought the suffering upon yourself. However, if your suffering becomes unbearable and you’re looking for someone to act as a surrogate mother, email my friend Will (wparente@stevens.edu). His mother is always looking for a new child to be less disappointed in. Good luck!
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