Catching a case of homesickness

By Tatum James
Staff Writer
Email: thehutchinsoncollegian@gmail.com

Getting homesick is something that is affecting many students right about now. I feel like as we’re now settled in and doing our every week schedules, we finally get a moment where we’re alone with our thoughts.

Luckily, I don’t live very far away, so I can go home when I have free weekends, but there are many students who live many states (or even oceans) apart from their families, and they have no chance to be able to travel home.

I miss getting to call my home, home. It’s still considered my home. It has my bedroom, my family, and my dogs. But the new thing that it has now that I’ve moved out is an expiration date. When I get to go home, I dread the day I have to leave, but I know my time there is bound to expire until the next time I get to go back and do it all over again.

Going from seeing all my back-home friends every day to maybe once a month was a big stab in the chest for me, especially since I have very few friends here, yet. Being a freshman here at Hutchinson Community College, this is my first time ever being away from home for this long of a period. I haven’t felt more homesick until I got here.

I feel so hard for the ones that live miles away. Especially the freshmen who are facing very big, new experiences for the first time. Everything over here is pretty much new to them, and I can only imagine what they were thinking during their first few days here. They may have to watch their friends get to go home some weekends, but they’re stuck here months at a time or more just because of how expensive it is just to be able to fly back for a few days.

Many students here at HutchCC are not from Kansas – or even in the surrounding states. I have heard lots of people say the thing they miss the most is their home-cooked meals and the weather back at home. Even though the cafeteria food is pretty great, I’m sure people miss the meals they were used to back at home.

It’s OK to be homesick and have to constantly make that phone call back at home. It’s OK to want so badly to sleep in your own bed and have your own space that you had back at home. Being homesick has forced me to gain confidence in doing things by myself that I never thought I could do. It might take some time and you might not think it now, but you will get through it.

Tatum James is a Jetmore freshman studying journalism.

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