College Life: The Return
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting on my porch in Champaign on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, watching the dogs and sipping a glass of water while I listen to this amazing Indie Goes Epic playlist on Google Play. I'm also counting down the days until I go back to Bourbonnais.
You see, as much as I loved summer in high school, in college things are completely different. In high school, you stay in the same place and can see the same friends while just taking a break from classes. Life goes on with you at home, and you don't miss a beat with your social life. You just don't have to go to school for a few months. It's awesome.
College is a completely different ballgame, especially if you go away to school. All those friends that you've become so close with during your school year are gone for the next three months, and life feels like it stops. Oh sure, you could reunite with your old friends from high school, but they're all in the same boat as you. Their lives stopped too.
To me, going home on break in college has become this luxurious rest. On break, I really don't do much of anything besides watch Netflix, sleep, and eat. I let my life stop for a few days, which when you're in a stressful school year can be a really good thing. Home was a refuge from the business of school in an incredibly good way.
Here's the problem with that perspective, though: it doesn't translate well to summer break. For the first few days of summer, I let myself have some fun. I went to a concert, slept in on the weekends, and reunited with some high school friends. It was relaxing, liberating, and fun.
However, after about a week of that honeymoon phase, I began to miss school. I missed my friends from my floor, I missed my amazing bandmates, and I missed those people I knew from classes or other school activities. I even missed my tiny dorm room, which is really saying something. There was this part of my heart that was an hour and a half away from where I was living, and I couldn't do anything to get it back. My home wasn't home anymore; Olivet had become that.
So, how did I cope with this? To be honest, I really didn't. There's only one tool to actually stay connected to school (which I'll get into in a second), but I thought that if I just forgot about everything up there and threw myself into working, everything would work out OK. Keeping myself busy made me acclimated to school really quickly, so why wouldn't it have the same effect at home? Here's why: college is a new home. College isn't the same place you've known your whole life. It's something new, fresh, and exciting. Going back home after a year of school is so strange and disorienting because you're leaving behind part of yourself somewhere else.
The one tool you can use to remedy this is communication. I sucked at this. Besides texting my roommate a few times after school ended and my band's group chat, I really only communicated with one person from Olivet for almost two months (and that person is now my girlfriend, so there were definitely some ulterior motives at play). I finally decided to call my roommate in July, and I was instantly reminded of what I missed about school and finally figured out how to deal with not being there. Talking to people (yes, actually talking to them on a phone) is the best way to overcome that distance. There's something about actually hearing a real voice that is more personal than just texting, and I think it helps maintain a better connection than almost any other form of communication.
I say all this to encourage those of you who are having a harder time coming home from school than leaving for college for the first time. It will be really, really strange and disorienting, but it will also teach you the value of being intentional about talking to people while you're away for break. Quality time in any form is one of the most important aspects of building and maintaining relationships in life, and sometimes it can be a hard thing to find in life changes, like going to and from home. It's so worth it, though, because keeping strong relationships with the people you know at school will help you be able to pick right back up where things left off upon returning to campus.
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