With Homecoming week coming to an end, many students are scrambling to prepare for parents weekend. Although the streets and local businesses of University Park and State College will be filled to the brim with reunited families for the next few days, there will remain plenty of students who may feel left out. Whether due to conflicting schedules or distance, some parents just won’t be able to join the festivities, which may lead students to develop increased feelings of homesickness over the next few weeks, especially first years or transferring students.

What is Homesickness?

Currently, about 7% of US college students experience some form of homesickness, totaling to approximately 1 million young adults. However, the statistic for first year students alone is drastically more concerning at 69% according to a UCLA survey, and only heightens the further the student is from home.

Of course, this trend is mainly due to the stress which comes with acclimating to a new environment. Students are pushed out of their comfort zone and must adapt to living on their own for the first times in their lives. However, if they don’t adapt quickly enough, they may become vulnerable. As Kirsten Wong from NBC News explains, homesickness at its core is about a student’s lack of security. Many experiencing homesickness often feel as if they have little control, and develop a negative outlook towards their situation.

Homesickness is often mistaken for depression, for the two share many of the same symptoms. They each lead to a decrease in motivation and can cause students to develop unhealthy coping deficits, such as over- or under- eating and sleeping. Homesickness also leads to seclusion and anxiety, which only worsens a student’s situation. However, the effects of homesickness will go away whenever the student is home or around family, whereas depression’s symptoms will stay.

How to Cope

The effects described above can cause lasting harm to a student’s confidence, and have led homesickness to become one of the top ten reasons for dropping out of school. Because of this, it is imperative for students to learn the following positive coping strategies.

The first strategy involves ways of making the new environment feel more like home. The best way to do this is to first form a new support network at school, a “friend family.” These people will be able to relate to new problems and provide a safe space to vent distressed feelings. Adding decorations from home into a dorm room may also be beneficial. These can be pictures of family or friends, posters, anything that a student may be used to seeing. This will add familiarity to living spaces and may make students feel more comfortable.

It may also be beneficial to take some time to simply explore the campus. By now, students will probably know their hometown like the back of their hand, so it may be off-putting to live in an area they know very little about. They must take some time to learn about the area they’re now living in- including the off campus areas. Exploring now will also decrease the likelihood of getting lost on the way to class later, something their future self could be eternally grateful for.

The other possible route focuses more on communication with home. As mentioned above, negative effects usually fade when the student returns home, which may lead him or her to make an excessive amount of visits. While these may offer short-term relief, they will only prolong the student’s insecure feelings and prevent them from becoming fully acclimated to their new home. In order to combat this, a student and their parents should set strict dates for the student to visit home. This plan allows students to still have visits to look forward to, but because these visits will be limited and spread out, the student will have enough time to adapt to their new home. This can be done with phone calls to friends and family as well.

 

Adapting to a new environment is never easy, especially when it’s a student’s first time living alone. There are a lot of tasks to juggle which can be overwhelming at times, and will leave many with a sense of longing for home. However, because homesickness is so common, students have no trouble finding someone who can relate to their situation.

 

“Change is not pleasant,

But change is constant.

Only when we change and grow,

We’ll see a world we never know.”

-Wisdom of the Orange Woodpecker