Don’t get me wrong, I love Purdue. I love my friends here and I love the opportunities awarded to me. I am also so pumped for next year, but right now, I’m just counting down the days until I’m home.
No matter how great Purdue is, there is something about being home that makes me feel completely at ease. Maybe it’s because I’m only a freshman, so I still don’t look at Purdue as home yet, or maybe it’s because no matter how far away I move from my family, they will always be home base.
College also drains you completely. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting straight A’s or are almost failing all your classes, by the last month of the spring semester, you feel as if you have nothing left to give. I get that feeling on a daily basis. Your motivation takes a nose dive, partly due to the temperature increasing and the sun starting to shine a little more than it had the past couple months. The thought of going home and seeing people you have not seen in awhile and going on crazy adventures is the only thing getting you through these last five weeks.
You know that feeling when nothing in your brain is working the way you want it to and you just want to hug your mom? Yep, I’m at that point in the semester. My mom is my personal de-stressor. Whenever I’m stressing out about anything, I call her and she (for the most part) distresses me and makes me have a different outlook on my situation. I am so excited to go home so that I can talk to her face-to-face every day and get her wisdom first hand.
I think I have a lot of these feelings more than the normal college student because of the distance between my college and my home. I know that the people who can go home on a random weekend if they want to might not feel this way because they can see their parents basically whenever they want.
I also think that how close I am to my family makes me want to go home even though I love where I am now. I think that by not being able to physically hug my mom or sister makes college harder in a sense. They have always been my biggest form of support and knew exactly what to say when I was stressed or upset about something. Yes, they can do that over the phone now, but it’s not the same as if it was in person.
I think that there are a lot of factors that play into someone wishing they were home and not at college. I’m always confused when they drop me off at the airport to return to Purdue because part of me is looking forward to seeing my friends and being back on campus but there is always part of me that doesn’t want to come back and just stay at home with my family. I think that as time goes on and Purdue starts to feel more like a home to me and not just my college, all this will change. But for now, Purdue is great, but the fact that I’ll be back with my family in less than five weeks brings me incredible joy.