I’m going on my fourth year of being an out-of-state student in university; I live in New York, but I go to school in Florida. Even though this dynamic has been my lifestyle for some time now, it’s something I still haven’t gotten entirely used to.
When I was first applying to universities, I knew I didn’t want to stay in my home state. I had a really difficult time in high school, so I started associating this dark phase in my life with New York.
With that, I decided I wanted to go somewhere I figured I would find myself feeling the happiest and what other place would someone want to go to than the sunshine state?
To be fair, there are probably a lot of other places I could have gone, but my mind was set and once I got accepted to USF, I was on my way to live what I hoped would be the good life. Well, let’s just say that this drastic change was not everything I had expected.
My freshman year, though definitely exciting, was filled with some hardships. School was harder and felt more important than ever before and, to top it off, I was majoring in something I didn’t enjoy.
By the time sophomore year rolled around I changed my major, but my problems weren’t solved. So, I started going back to New York, a lot more times than I anticipated considering I pretty much villainized the state.
Even though I was having my share of Florida fun, I wasn’t the perfectly happy person I assumed I would be after leaving New York. I actually found myself hitting some pretty hard lows that I never thought I would reach again after leaving.
Once I made it to junior year, I finally started to realize that I was missing the point the whole time. It never mattered where I was geographically, what mattered was who I was with.
New York is not a bad place; I just experienced a lot of difficulties, and my response was to escape. Sometimes, we need to leave the places that are hurting us so that we can heal. And sometimes we need to leave those same places to realize what we’re leaving behind that we truly need; for me, it’s my family.
Every time I go back and reunite with my family, I never want to say goodbye. They are honestly my favorite people on the planet and they are the reason I enjoy going back to New York.
Right now, I’m dealing with feelings of guilt for having left my family in the first place, but I know deep down that it’s what I needed to do for myself at the time.
As a senior, being an out-of-state student has gotten a little easier because now I know that the relationships and the people that we love, and that love us, are the most important things in life and I will never take that for granted.