I am feeling really homesick at the minute. What is your advice?
The odds are that there will be points in your degree when you are horrendously homesick. Usually the pang strikes when you’re halfway through an essay, the heating’s broken and there’s nothing in your cupboard but a tin of kidney beans and a broken colander. At these points it’s perfectly understandable to crave mum’s cooking and a tidy, cosy house.
You might also find, particularly in the first few weeks when you’re meeting strangers every day and every night out feels like your running a first impression gauntlet, that you start to miss your friends from home. After spending years building up a solid friendship group to head to the pub with, it can feel pretty cruel to be deprived of that security in one fell swoop and left to simply get on with it.
The important thing to remember is homesickness is completely normal and understandable. Don’t feel guilty if you’re not always having The Time of Your Life. University is amazing, but it is also difficult. Moving to a different county, or even country, to start a new course with entirely new people is never going to be easy. Simply crossing the boundary from West to North Yorkshire to come to York was enough to shake me up good and proper (“what do you mean the city has WALLS?”), although I’ll admit that I’ve never been the most adaptable of travellers.
The best way to deal with inevitable wobbles is to talk to someone. Ring or Skype a family member or a friend from home. It sounds obvious, but if you make an effort to keep in touch with your pre-University nearest and dearest it will remind you that you have a support system outside of the campus bubble, and stop you from worrying about falling out of contact with your old life.
Also, remember that most of your peers feel the same. Talk to a housemate or coursemate and you’ll realise that you are by no means alone. Besides, university terms at York really aren’t that long. Ten weeks vanishes in a heartbeat and you’ll be back in the bosom of home before you know it, trying to avoid your mum’s nosy intrusions into your love life and wondering why you were so eager to get back here in the first place.