Homesickness Website

I just wanted to post something that I was surfing on the web and found. This is some stuff I found on a website about homesickness....

Beginning life at university naturally generates both excitement and anxiety about the move, academic work, meeting new people. For some, this apprehension is quickly overcome as they adapt to a new environment; for others the transition takes longer and sometimes emerges as homesickness where there is a preoccupation with home-focused thoughts. There is a yearning for and grieving over the loss of what is familiar and secure: most often it is about the loss of people - family and friends - but it is also about the loss of places and routines.

Some students will start by being mildly depressed and anxious several weeks before leaving home, in anticipation of the impending change. Others will be fine initially, and then to their surprise find themselves feeling homesick later in the academic year, perhaps after the Christmas break, or even at the start of their second academic year. But commonly it is the first few days or weeks after arriving at university which are the most difficult.

Students are not immune just because they have successfully experienced leaving home before. Vulnerability to feeling homesick is affected by:

• the distance from home
• a sense of anticlimax at finally arriving at university after working towards it for so long
• whether the student was responsible for the decision to come to university
• unhappiness due to expectations of university not being met
• "job strain" - i.e. work overload and low control over it
• contrast in lifestyle.

Those who are homesick often feel they have no control over their environment, and that they are not identified with it or committed to the university or their place in it.

There was much more about university and students... if interested go to http://www.counselling.cam.ac.uk/hsick.html its actually very interesting.

Dana Karic