April 26th, 2010
After the boxes have been unpacked, the parents have gone, and the dust kicked up from the general hubbub associated with moving has settled, a feeling of loneliness sets in. The first few weeks in your new college dorm can be an emotional time as you adjust to your life away from home and find yourself surrounded by unfamiliar faces. The entire process can be even more difficult to stomach if you do not particularly click with your new roommate or live alone. Coping with change is something that all college students have to deal with, though it may be more challenging for some than others.
The biggest reason that homesickness sets in for many first year students is because everything that they are used to has suddenly disappeared. The predictability of encountering familiar faces no longer exists, and instead, students must tread through uncharted physical, social, and emotional territory. Longing for home is also a longing for familiarity. In addition, many students have abandoned their social support networks when they move for school. Few students have the luck of attending the same school as their closest peers, so many enter into college completely alone and must begin building new friendships from the ground up. This can be a frightening prospect, especially since many of the friendships they had from home were the product of years of cultivation. To be demanded to create entirely new friendships as quickly as possible seems near impossible.
However, creating new social support networks is not impossible. Many times, students form strong bonds with their roommates because living in close quarters day in and day out creates a mutual need for connection. Students are far more willing to make friends with their roommates than enemies and this mindset can lead to the creation of healthy relationships. To combat feelings of homesickness and loneliness, students need to make an honest effort to go out and create a new social support network. In the college setting, it is much easier to accomplish this than in the high school setting. This is because many first year students on campus are actively seeking new friendships, so as these students find one another, friendships are eagerly established. Unlike in high school, where many social circles were already formed in elementary and middle school and therefore more closed off from newcomers, in college, nearly every student is without a social circle so they are more likely to form new ones with one another. When a new social support group is created, students will find that their pangs of loneliness will quickly fade.
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