Everyone experiences homesickness the first few months of college, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. If it’s been more than a few months and you’re still missing home in a bad way, then there’s a few things you can do to ease the pain. There’s no way to bring your hometown to college, but you can find some effective coping measures. Here is how to overcome homesickness in college.
Engage in a Hobby
If there is a particular hobby that you had when you were back home, or if there is a sport that you liked to play, you should definitely find a way to continue engaging with it while you’re in college. If it’s a sport, you may not be playing for your college team, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find a recreational league. If it’s some kind of hobby, then you should find a group of people who are into that hobby as well and make some new friends.
Schedule Phone Calls
It can be really hard to get over your homesickness when you just can’t be with the people who are most important to you. Whether those people are your parents, close friends or a significant other, you should make an effort to schedule a weekly phone call. If possible, try to use FaceTime or Skype so that you can really feel as though you’re in the same room together. When you make it a regular call, you always know when you’ll talk next and you can rely on each other’s support as your lives are changing.
Learn how to Cook
One of the things most college students miss most about home is the taste of a homemade meal – especially those special family recipes that you can’t find anywhere else. If this is the case for you, then you should ask your parents to send you their recipes. You can even turn your weekly phone calls into a regular cooking lesson. Besides, you’ll have to learn how to make these recipes so that you can cook them for your kids at some point too, right?
Get to Know Your New Home
It’s easy to miss home when everything in college feels so foreign to you. However, that’s an easy thing to change. If you go to a school like University of San Francisco, you have a whole vibrant city to explore, and you won’t want to miss out on all the things it has to offer. Whether you want to spend an afternoon at the baseball park, an art museum, the academy of sciences or just checking out the shops on Valencia street, there is something to love for just about everyone.
Send Funny Text Messages
When you have people that you really miss, sometimes a weekly phone call just isn’t enough. However, you don’t want to spend your whole college career on the phone. That’s why it can be very helpful to just text the ones that you love when you think of them. See something funny that you think they would get a kick out of? Text them a picture so that you can still share those moments. These little gestures can really go a long way without diverting your attention completely.
