Whether it’s your first or your hundredth time living away from home, homesickness is real.

Moving away from home is always a huge transition. It can encompass a wide variety of emotions; after a year and a half of pandemic living, you might have a really fraught relationship with “home,” whatever that means to you. You might feel particularly anxious about leaving a place where you have lived for a year and a half straight. You might also feel particularly excited about leaving a place where you have lived for a year and a half straight. Bwog Staff is going through this too, especially as we collectively readjust to campus life, so we’re here to help you out. Here are our tips to beat homesickness. 

1. If you do feel homesick, don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s completely normal to feel homesick. It can help to write down your feelings in a journal entry or record them as a voice memo, as a way of getting them out of your head. Your OL, roommates, and friends (from college and from home) can also be good people to talk to about homesickness, since they probably have felt the same way. 
2. Try to nail down exactly what you are homesick for. Then you can figure out what specifically you need to feel better. Do you need to call a loved one on the phone and hear their voice? Do you need to look at pictures of your pets? Do you need to find the best restaurant in NYC for a regional specialty you love? These are all great ways to channel the feeling of homesickness into an activity that will soothe you. 
3. Bring elements of home to college. Put up pictures, memorabilia, anything that ties your new home back to your old home. If you have kitchen access, and are homesick for a family recipe, try to recreate it here. Bonus: the physical act of decorating your room or cooking will divert your attention from how you’re feeling.
4. Make plans for when you’re next home. When you feel homesick, think about what specific thing you would want to do if you were home. Write that thing down: whether it’s seeing your best friend, going to a favorite restaurant, or just sleeping in your own bed. Naming the activity can really help soothe homesickness. Another perk of writing down what you want to do: when you’re next home, you’ll have a pre-made to-do list. 
5. Make plans for the “here and now”. Go to a club meeting, dining hall, lounge. Text that nice person from your OL group, or from down the hall, and ask if they want to get dinner or coffee. Find a cool park to check out in another part of the city. These things can help you feel more grounded and at home in your new surroundings. On that note…
6. Reach out to the people around you. If they’re willing to, talk to people you meet about their hometowns. Take the New York Times dialect quiz to reveal any hyper-specific regional slang. Swap stories about your wacky high school experiences. It’s nice to remember that everyone came here from somewhere.

Homesickness via Pixabay