As young children, we have spent our entire 17-18 years with our family, people whom we really love. Our parents taught us how to love and took care of us when it was needed. We depended on them when it came to everything. We depended on them for things like cooking, cleaning, doing our laundry (for most students) and so much more.  

 Homesickness is the stress and sadness of leaving home or loved ones behind and it seems like many Altoona students have developed homesickness. It is hard to leave loved one’s home and to move to a whole new place for a school where students must start over in making a new family/group of friends.  

For the three weeks we have been in school, about 3 kids dropped out to move back with their family. Based on research students diagnosed with anxiety and students who are shy are more prone to homesickness. (Thurber, C. A., & Walton, E. A. (2007). Preventing and Treating Homesickness. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 16)

Due to this situation I wanted to expand the knowledge by interviewing a recent drop out of Altoona who wanted to remain anonymous. Because I wanted to know more about why she dropped out I had a phone interview with her. When asked the question “Why did you move back home?” she responded with “I left mostly because of anxiety and crying in class and before class. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t gone to many of my classes due to the amount of work given and thinking about how much I miss my mom, family, friends, bed and basically everything I left back at home.” After a couple of conversations, she told me that she wasn’t going to drop out of college altogether. Since she wants to be a kindergarten teacher her main goal is to look for a job at a daycare and eventually, she will reapply back to school, but this time she would commute. She will be applying to Penn State Brandywine where she will keep her Penn State family legacy going on.  

I hope that many kids connect with this article and understand that there is nothing wrong with being Homesick. There are many people out there that feel the same as you. Even though it is a lot of money I recommend that kids take the bus back home just to say hi to loved ones. WE ARE… Penn State!