Balancing Your Life as an International Student: Battling Homesickness

Homesickness hits people all the time! When you leave your sweet family for college or a long journey, you will inevitably experience this feeling that squeezes your stomach. No matter how much I love my life here as an undergraduate student, I still have homesickness sometimes. Fortunately, I managed to balance the feeling, and I want to share my experience and suggestions in this blog to help people battle homesickness.

The powerful homesickness I had in my first semester freshman year was unforgettable. I did not realize how powerful this feeling could be until a couple of weeks after I landed, feeling myself falling into a deep dark mine. When school just started, my heart was full of freshman excitement and curiosity. I was picturing myself meeting my lifelong friends a few minutes before classes start, hanging out with them every week, and going on trips together. The fact was that I did make friends in the first week, but I still felt lonely and wished that my old friends from high school could be there with me.

I started missing home in my dorm and not feeling protected, understood, and secure by people around me. I was not confident about speaking another language to start a conversation because I was too self-conscious about people judging my accent. I also realized that many students already set up their groups because they went to the same high school or from the same region. I remember one time I tried to make friends with one of my classmates. I asked about the person’s Snapchat, assuming it was similar to making friends in China through WeChat. The student suddenly became concerned and did not want to keep the conversation anymore. Later I realized that Snapchat is personal contact, and asking people’s Snapchat at the first conversation is considered rude. I felt extremely embarrassed and wished that I could use magic to eliminate the awkward memory forever.

I couldn’t help but think about how easy making friends would be in my country. So I called my parents and my old friends every day and felt relaxed and secure in my “virtual” zoom. I became way too obsessed with connecting people back home, and my homesickness became more serious. There were times I dreamed about going back home in my sleep; the intense feeling of emptiness and disappointment stuck in my mind when I woke up. I called my parents for two hours one night and ended up questioning if studying abroad was the correct choice for me; I even wrote about missing home for my first two assignments in the writing class.

I know I am lucky to have the best campus food in the U.S. but there was always something missing in the taste that made me miss my father’s cooking like crazy. The most unbearable time for me was the week after final exams. My roommate went back to China immediately after her last final exam, lots of my friends went back to their states and countries. I booked the flight ticket for Christmas, which was a little over a week after my final exam. As a result, I had nothing to do except watch TV shows and read friends’ posts while having hotpot alone in my empty dorm.

If you are having/worried about a similar experience, here is something you can earn from my lesson.

• Adjust Your Attitude: This might be harder than it sounds! How many of you unconsciously thought about “this is what would happen if I did it in my hometown” when you had a hard moment in another country? Such thoughts might comfort you at the moment, but they are toxic and will make you live in your past and imagination. They discourage you from getting used to the new environment. Similarly, try not to compare yourself with your peers aggressively. I suffer from this practice, and I am still trying to get rid of this habit. Have someone to look up to, but not someone to compete with. Comparing yourself too much with others will slowly turn you into a self-conscious or a self-loathing person.

  
  Keep your confidence at the right level. If you are trying a new practice like making friends with students who are not from your country or asking questions during a big lecture, you may feel overwhelmed at the beginning. Our brains tend to think about the worst scenario that usually will not happen. Knowing that you can always learn something whether you succeed or not, and having a good amount of confidence will slightly increase your chance of success. 
   

• Limit your time contacting people back home: Like I mentioned previously, calling family and friends back home is a great way to reduce homesickness. However, overdosing on it could potentially worsen the homesick situation. Make a schedule for how many times or hours you plan to spend on such activity and try your best not to exceed the planned timing. I call my parents three times a week, and I feel closely connected with them even if I am not living in the same city with them.
   
• Keep yourself busy: Instead of being in your room and thinking about your low-stress life back home, why not keep yourself busy with your interests and build more happy memories here. Join some extracurricular activities or events, enjoy the atmosphere, and meet more people. Take a walk along the nearby trails and reservoir, read a book in the afternoon, and absorb countless inspirations. There might be small surprises in those activities that can make you fall in love with your current living condition.
   
• Create some new traditions: If you have traditions back in your hometown, why not bring or create some new traditions here in your beautiful new environment? Creating a tradition will provide you a sense of familiarity of being at home. It can help you adapt to your new place as a second hometown by osmosis. For example, if you have a new tradition of watching a movie on the fourth Friday of every month, you will unconsciously have positive feelings toward the theater. If you celebrate a holiday with your best friends and make it your tradition, you are bringing your hometown practice here. Traditions can give you something to look forward to. If you reread your favorite book in a specific month each year, you will be more looking forward to this month.

   

Do you know that homesickness can also happen for school?

My second semester as a freshman was much better. I was more familiar with the culture, made friends with different people, and joined many events and activities. I started to view the campus and my dorm as my new home and did not have as much homesickness as my first semester. My friends are my family here. Watching sports games and having late nights with them became my routine. I still booked the earliest flight for summer break for going back home because I was traumatized from my “staying at the dorm alone for an extra week” situation in the previous semester, but I regretted my decision to buy the flight ticket early after the semester ended and I missed the chance to travel with my friends who graduated that year. Going back home was as great as it always has been. I visited my relatives and old friends, going to places I used to love as a tennager, but after the first month, I started to miss the independent student life and my close friends in college. I found out that my life at home lacked challenge and excitement. Every day was like a replica of the one before, and I did not find any interest that lasted more than two weeks. I started to feel empty and isolated again.  

My experience taught me that:

• Don’t stay in your hometown the whole summer! I wondered why my winter break back home was so much more pleasant than my summer break, and I believe that one of the most significant reasons is that I was changing my lifestyle when I lived at home. The first month was full of passion and excitement of having my old lifestyle back, but I already adapted to my new campus lifestyle at the moment, and I felt it was hard to adjust my lifestyle for a long time. My suggestion for this situation is that keep visiting home during the breaks but limit your visit time to under one month and a half. Switching your lifestyle every three months could actually exhaust you mentally and physically. 
   
• Travel around in your country: I took several trips within my country during the long break, and they were super helpful for improving my emotional condition. I took a 5-hour train ride to visit my aunt and cousin who live in Shanghai, and a 10-hour train ride to visit my grandparents in another city. I received love and care from my relatives and got fresh feelings living in different cities. When I looked at my traveling cost, I was glad that the budget was cheaper than traveling in the U.S., and I can cover almost everything with my internship salary. Traveling within your country is much more affordable, and it is extremely helpful in adjusting your mentality.    
   
• Learn a skill that can benefit your life (cooking/driving/investing): If you feel the difficulty of having a long-lasting interest, try to learn some skills that will be important in your future life. For example, if you haven’t cooked for yourself yet, start to practice at home with your mother's secret recipe. If you didn't receive your driving license, participate in a driving school; if you have some extra pocket money, try to look into investment practices. Learning new skills and hobbies will add a greater level of fulfillment while you are away from home.  

Thank you all for reading this blog! Studying in another country is very hard. As international students, we would have more hard times than others because of the cultural difference and homesickness. I hope you can find the suggestions in this article and all the other ones helpful.