BTS: The Best Ways To Deal With Homesickness in College

Hi friends! Welcome to the fourth installment of my Back-To-School series! I hope you have enjoyed this series and found it helpful so far because there's only one post left! Be on the look out for that post sometimes next week. In the mean time, here's what do to if you feel homesick in college.

We get so excited at the thought of college because we picture ourselves being independent, living it up and just having lots of fun. However, I don't think most of us realize how much we are going to miss home when we are finally in college. When you've finally settled in, your stuff is unpacked, your dorm is all glammed up and there's nothing more to plan or fix, reality sinks in. You start thinking of all the things you're probably missing back home. Maybe it's just it's just sitting at the dinner table with all your family every night or watching The Bachelorette with your mom. When you start feeling homesick, what do you do?

Here are a few tips you can follow, to help you cope with homesickness:

Why are you homesick

First and foremost, you have to figure out what's making you homesick.  Are you missing all your childhood friends, your family, the comfort of your home state or maybe your boyfriend/girlfriend? Once you've got this figured out, you can then take some steps I’ll mention later in this post, to deal with what you're going through. 

What you're going through is totally normal

Every time you come back from school you're not greeted by your cute dog anymore. Even though your siblings often get super annoying, you still miss fighting for the remote with them. Let's not forget your sweet parents! Yeah you can still talk to your mom over the phone but it's just not the same, and your dad's not-so-funny jokes are best told in person. 

It's very normal to miss all those moments. Even the most independent student can't escape from feeling this way, so you're not alone. This isn't weird and certainly does not mean that there must be something wrong with you. Au contraire, it simply confirms that you're a human being (I sure do hope so) who has completely ordinary feelings.

Make your dorm feel like home

If you really miss home, what better way to fix that than to make your dorm, your home away from home! You can ask your mom to send you a care package with a bunch of stuff that remind you of home. These could be candles that smell your house, a few pieces of decorations that remind you of your favorite places or a bunch of photos of your friends and family. Whatever will remind you of the things you miss most about home.

Get out of your dorm

I hate to break it to you, but you're most likely not going to feel better if all you do is go to class then straight back to your dorm. I know you've made awesome memories with your friends back home that you'll always cherish, which is one of the reasons why you miss home so much. However, you can make even more memories with more amazing people, if you put yourself out there and try to make new friends. It's never fun to have to start all over, but in order to successfully integrate into this new environment, you have to least try to meet new people. You seriously don't even have to try that hard! All you have to do is maybe attend a couple club meetings, go to those new student’s events, or if you're like me, just go anywhere there will be free food! There are so many ways to meet people, you just have find what works for you.

Keep in touch but don't overdo it

If you're lucky enough to be able to go home whenever you want, it's not always a good idea to do so. Just because you don't know anyone(yet) at your college, doesn't mean you should run back home every chance you get. If you can't go back home whenever you want but you're basically glued to Skype and Facetime, girl. I'm giving you a major side eye right now. There's no way you'll have time to build meaningful relationships with anyone at school when you're home all the time or on Skype. College is all about stepping out of your comfort zone and adapting to a new environment, but you can't do that if you're always back in your place of comfort. Apart from the few holidays you'll have, try not to go home unless you absolutely need to. Trust me, pretty soon you'll barely think about going home when you're having fun with all your new friends.

Give yourself some time

It will get better. I'm sorry for being super cheesy right now, but it's true. It does get better my friend. At first it might feel like you will never get used to this place where you absolutely know no one, but if you follow my advice and put yourself out there, you'll eventually feel at ease. Just because things aren't jolly right from the get go, does not mean they'll never be. Give it some time.

Explore your surroundings

You're new to this city, you have no attachment to it, so it's very understandable that you don't really feel that you belong here. But just because it feels like that now, does not mean that you have to sit in your dorm and be miserable. You can go check out that coffee shop down the street, the library, a park, or maybe your favorite restaurant! I like going to my favorite restaurants when I’m in different states just to see if there's any difference in the food or anything else. If you don't know where to start, just take a walk and go from there. Who knows what you'll stumble upon! Make sure you let someone know what you're doing, just to be safe.

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