I did not feel instantly at home at Harvard.
Woop, I said it. It’s real talk time. Freshman year was harder than I thought it would be. My family falls on the close-knit end of the spectrum, so after dinner on Freshman Move-in Day it felt extremely weird and scary to tell my parents, “I guess you can leave now.”
College movies don’t prepare you for homesickness. They don’t warn you about FOMO–the anxious Fear Of Missing Out you experience the first time you have nowhere to go on a Friday night. They don’t tell you that doing your laundry can be a full-body workout. They don’t tell you that you might not meet your best friends right away and they don’t tell you that that’s okay.
I had to learn all this on my own, since I have no older siblings and am therefore my family’s college guinea pig. But as someone who wanted to go to Harvard since I was old enough to Google search, I was expecting things to go a little bit more smoothly than they did. I’m not saying that I had a terrible time my freshman fall–I actually had a lot of good times and met a lot of great people and took a lot of cool classes. But I was homesick, and it kept getting colder and darker outside, and I worried that I would never find my people, my thing, my niche at Harvard. I worried that I would never feel completely comfortable here.
I don’t have a step-by-step guide to overcoming homesickness. It’s different for everyone. If you fit in immediately at Harvard and have never experienced homesickness, cheers to you, I respect that. But if you’re missing home and feeling self-doubt and wondering if you’re in the right place, you’re not alone! I feel you, and I will stake my life on the fact that a ton of other people feel you too. I can’t say that now that I’m a sophomore, I never miss home and I never experience self-doubt. But I can say that I have come to think of Harvard as my home. Not a replacement of my real home, but an extension of it. My Harvard friends haven’t replaced my family and my high school friends–they’ve just added to the collection of people I love. My House hasn’t replaced my house–it’s just another place where I get to live for part of the year. Dining hall food can never replace my mom’s cooking, but let’s be real: Marshmallow Mateys available at every meal? How awesome is that? And I ordered take-out most nights when I was living at home anyway.
My first piece of advice to anyone struggling with homesickness is to give it time. That sounds lame, but I promise, time makes most things better. It’s just a fact. If you have the option to go home on weekends, resist the urge! I went home all the time last year and, believe me, it just makes adjusting to college life harder. The more time you spend at school, the less homesick you will feel.
My second piece of advice is to stay cozy. Do what you can to make your room a warm, clean, peaceful haven that you look forward to returning to at the end of the day. Drink tea and pumpkin spice lattes. Bond with your roommates. Decorate your walls. Hang fairy lights. Get a couch. The more blankets and pillows and lamps, the better. Take care of yourself.
My third piece of advice is to throw yourself into the extracurricular activities that you love. Being part a group of people who are excited about the same things you’re excited about will take your mind off missing home and will also help you find your people, the people who you can be yourself around and who make you feel loved. This is how I’ve met most of my best friends here.
A lot of people don’t realize that it’s normal and okay not to feel happy all the time. It’s okay to have a bad day and miss home. It’s okay to doubt yourself. It’s okay to skip a lecture once in a while. It’s healthy to call your mom and have a good cry. The most important thing to remember is that you’re not alone–everyone rides the struggle bus sometimes (at least everyone I’ve ever met). If you’re homesick, be patient–it will pass. And in the meantime do your homework, take care of yourself, and do the things you love. You might just notice one day, like I did, that you feel at home at Harvard.