Handling Homesickness

During my senior year of high school, I honestly could not wait to get out of there. High school, as it is for most people, was incredibly rough for me, and the thought of going somewhere new where absolutely no one knew my name was my motivation to keep going. I had everything planned out: I would get there, reinvent my image (maybe get a new style), make some amazing friends right off the bat, join a million clubs, defy the Freshmen 15, maintain a 4.0, work the maximum amount of hours possible, visit my boyfriend on the weekends, decorate my room to the nine, and I would somehow do all of this with no anxiety at all! I had such high expectations – not only for Berry College, but for myself.

Flash Forward a few months: did I make it to Berry? Yes. Did I reinvent my image? Not at all. What about the amazing new friends? Well, I had acquaintances, but nothing I would categorize as “besties.” I hadn’t joined any clubs yet, definitely hadn’t defied the Freshmen 15, that 4.0 was out the window, and my boyfriend and I had broken up about a month into school. Needless to say, I felt pretty miserable. Not a single thing had gone the way I planned for it to, and on top of that, I ached to be back home. I just felt miserably alone, and I remember thinking that I was the only one who was feeling this way.

But in all honesty, I was in no way the only one. Even though it felt like something was wrong with me, what I was feeling was actually way more normal than I could have imagined. Later on in my college career, I met people that told me about how they struggled when they first came to Berry, and they were people that seemed to be adjusting just fine. When it comes to college students making that transition into college life, around 30% will struggle with some degree of homesickness, and when you focus on just first-year students, that percentage jumps up to around 70% that experience intense feelings of homesickness (hap.org). While that number may seem a bit high at first, it makes perfect sense. Homesickness is so much more than simply missing home. You’ve lost routine, comfort, familiarity, and if you’re in a dorm, privacy. Whether we realize it or not at the time, this loss is so difficult to navigate on our own.

I came to realize this in the first few weeks of my college career, and once I reached out to others, things got so much easier. The Counseling Center was an incredible resource for me, as it provided me a way to talk through these feelings without the fear of judgement. Though, you’ll find that once you bring up the subject to peers, they will usually be incredibly receptive, even if they aren’t feeling it as much as you. I started re-establishing a routine here at Berry and having that sense of normalcy and stability helped to ease those feelings of dread. And two years later, I’m still here.

My point is this: it will get better. I am living proof. I went from sobbing in my car to my mom freshmen year, begging to come home, to actually counting down the days until I could be back at Berry again. I won’t pretend and say that it’s easy, because homesickness comes and goes in waves. What is different now is that I am unafraid to confront it. Once you normalize those feelings and understand why they are there, it becomes so much easier to handle them. Take things one day at a time, and sooner or later, every day becomes a little bit easier.

*If you are having intense feelings of anxiety or depression that won’t subside, please reach out to the Counseling Center at (706-236-2259) to schedule an appointment*

Written by Bailey Nelms