How Being Homesick Could Secretly Be Ruining Your College Experience

It's December.

You've almost made it through your first semester of college, but you're not feeling all that accomplished.

You've gone home every weekend. You cry yourself to sleep more often than you'd like to admit.

You feel like you made a huge mistake leaving your home to go off to school.

But you were so sure this was the school for you.

You were so sure you were going to love it here, you would feel at home here and you would get here and never want to leave.

First of all, let me ask you some questions:

What was it about this place that made you fall in love with it?

What was it that made you so sure you were going to have the time of your life here?

Was it the beautiful campus? Was it the uplifting atmosphere among the students?

Or what about the city it's surrounded by? Was it everything you wanted?

Now, let me ask you some more questions:

Did any of those things change?

Did the campus get ugly? Did the amazing atmosphere all of a sudden fade when you arrived on campus?

Or are you just forgetting those things that made you fall in love with it in the first place?

As humans, we have this problem with not trusting our instincts.

We put all of our eggs in one basket, and when that basket doesn't yield the results we want right away, we start to doubt it.

We start to think we were wrong for trusting it.

You chose the school you're at for a number of different reasons, and you shouldn't let some homesickness let you forget that.

We dream college up to be this amazing experience that is all sunshine and rainbows.

Then, when we get there, we realize otherwise.

We feel drained, defeated and fooled. But, that doesn't mean we were wrong for going there.

It's normal to feel this way as a freshman.

In fact, it would be weird if you didn't feel this way.

The homesickness will soon go away, you'll get better at studying and you will eventually remember why you chose this school to begin with.

But first, you have to give it a chance.

You can't go home every single weekend. 

Try staying on campus. Find some things to do with your friends in that city you love so much.

Your family will understand, and the next time you see them will feel so much more special.

I know going home lifts a huge weight off your shoulders every Friday, but that weight will get lighter when you start to take active steps toward curing your homesickness.

I also know you want to cry every time you pull out of your driveway on Sundays.

You dread the drive back so much, and you wish you could just stay home forever.

Don't you hate that feeling?

Why go home when it's so hard knowing you have to leave it? Let this be a reason you stay at school.

The withdrawal symptoms will be tough to deal with at first.

But eventually, you will realize staying at school is better for you.

On top of that, you'll start to get that feeling you yearned for so badly when you were in high school: the feeling of being off on your own at a college you love so much.

You'll start to feel more at home the more you stay there. You'll start to appreciate and love it more.

But, you can't expect to just love it immediately. No one does that.

Freshman year is hard for everyone, but you have to push through it in order to get to the good stuff.

These really are some of the best years of your life, even though the adjustment isn't easy.

Take a deep breath, remember why you chose to come to this place to begin with and allow yourself to experience it.

Rome really wasn't built in a day.