When you first got to college did you tell your parents you wanted to come home?

Come home?? Never entered my mind since I usually came home on weekends. Then even that stopped for awhile.
Then I got married!

Nope. I was sucked into the college world quickly, and enjoyed every minute of it. I think the thing that really helped me adjust so quickly was that I went to college with some close friends from high school. I didn’t have to get acquainted to a complete stranger as a roommate, and I always had those friends to fall back on if things got overwhelming. This made the transition much smoother.

Not when I went to college, but I did the first few scary months after I moved to New York (I was 19 and had never been out of Texas).

And do you want to know why I never did go home? Because my parents always told me I could if I wanted to.

@Austinlad nice parents, AL.

Nope. College is generally the first time you actually get to start establishing your own life away from the confines of the limits established by your parents. You get to choose what you want to do in every little aspect of your life.

The thought about coming home NEVER entered my mind (except for when I had a week off (Thanksgiving, Christmas, some Spring Breaks) and as the years went by, and I developed my own strong social network, I even spent those holidays around campus.

I love my parents, but it’s totally ridiculous to force a 17 year old to do things like going to church, so when I’m somewhere where I’m not being micromanaged like that, I don’t think it’s a wonder I wouldn’t rush to come back :)

I will say though, that as the years of college passed, I did miss good home cooking once in a while.

I moved out after having been going to college for 2 years, so it wasn’t as huge of a plunge as what college freshmen experience. And my parents do still ask me to come up every once in a while to help out with things.

I look forward to going home, I like clean laundry, good food, TV, and air conditioning. I like some of the chats I have with my parents. But I don’t know if I ever told them I wanted to come home.
When I was doing the last walkthrough of my parents’ house, making sure I had everything I needed, and saying my goodbyes to my mom, that was the closest I’ve gotten to crying in a very long time.

@Sarcasm

you don’t have A/C in college? Where’d you go?!

@mrrich724 I moved into a house with some other guys. Not into the school’s dorms.

:( I was the same as all of you. College was an awesome adventure.

We dropped our oldest daughter off at college last week and just she texted me that she wants to come home. Classes start tomorrow.

I was hoping it was totally normal and that I was the exception.
Now I do not know what to do.

@Dog Is it dorm-mate issues, or college in general? My sister did the same thing, because she had a horrible dorm-mate at first. As it turned out, it really wasn’t that difficult to switch rooms, and then she began to really enjoy college.

I think it’s normal for some, not for others. She may be getting freaked at the thought of college level classes, and that she might not be able to handle it. If she’s not been prone to out of control panic before this, maybe she just needs to see that every one else in the freshman class is in the same boat. I hope it all works out for her! And for you! Personnaly, i would recommend waiting to see how she weathers the first few weeks of classes, but then I don’t know her… :-)

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities I am not sure yet. She is still sleeping. I just got a text at 4am saying “I want to go home mom. I don’t like it”

She seemed to like her room mate- they have a lot in common.

She left a boyfriend down here who didn’t want her to go to college. I do not know if that is a factor here or not.

@Dog Since classes and schoolwork have yet to start, I would imagine that the room mate is the big issue here. It can be really odd moving from somewhere where you had your own space and surroundings, to a place where you have to share a living space with a complete stranger. I would bet the boyfriend is a part of it too, but I’d begin by trying to learn more about her and her room mate. Best of luck to you and her. :)

No, although I did want to get out of there. I’d just skip class for a few days and drive to my SO’s place.

I understand that lots of kids have trouble adjusting the first year. But I was desperate to escape from my parents, so I didn’t even go home for summers.

I didn’t live at college but we were assigned extensive studio space that was open 24/7. We took great pains to outfit our studio with a small fridge, microwave, fold-out ottoman bed, etc.

I rarely went home. Probably slept at home two-three nights a week.

I haven’t had to face this yet because I live at home with my parents and commute to school (it’s not far – I thought it would be a little ridiculous to dorm for undergraduate study and have saved a lot of money by staying home.) But now I’m ready to get out of here. The graduate schools I’m interested in just get further and further from home as I go down the list. Won’t miss my area a bit, but I will miss my family a good deal.

My close friend, however, moved from one end of California to the other and wanted to drop out of school after a week in. She was miserable. Her suitemates drove her crazy, her best friend drove her crazy, her classes weren’t maintaining her interest, but mostly she missed her mom. She stuck through the quarter and will be graduating this year :)

@Dog Maybe you can send her a care package? Writing letters to my friend helped her out during her tougher weeks.

I got pretty homesick at the start of the first semester, and when I went home for fall break I was so happy to be there, I cried like a baby.

It wore off. Quickly. That long weekend at home was pretty much all it took.

Ask your daughter to stick it out for at least the first semester, if not her freshman year. If she is still unhappy, maybe she can transfer to a school closer to home or to a school with an atmosphere that makes her more comfortable. Is the school really big, and maybe she is used to a small town/small school? Is the atmosphere different than she expected from visiting? I’m sure you’ll talk to her to find the root of the problem so the two of you can solve it from there.

No, I wanted to leave home. I finally felt some measure of safety once I was at uni.

I didn’t go to college right away, instead I went to basic training (a week after graduation). So this is a little different, but I’ll share it with you.

I wanted to get away from my dad and I thought it would be great. Instead, I wanted to go home very badly after a few days of being there. It wasn’t because of the stuff I had to do at basic though, it was because I missed my family (except for my dad). I was homesick. My family was always very close and it felt so weird to be so far away and missing everything. Leaving wasn’t an option though, so I had to suck it up and keep on going. I’m glad I did it and I would do it again, it just took some time to adjust to. After a few weeks, I started to develop a bond with the people I was with and it really helped get rid of the homesick feeling.

I had a picture of my little cousins that I kept in my ID holder that always helped me get by when I was feeling sad. We weren’t able to have many personal items in our barracks, so that picture was pretty much all I had.

My parents were the ones who wanted me to come home.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Did you come home?

@Dog, on the weekends. I live 40 minutes away from campus and my family depends on me for too much stuff to not come home every now and again.

I didn’t tell them that, but I sure felt it. The first week was pretty much all fun and parties and I didn’t feel homesick at first. It finally set in after a week or so and lasted a couple weeks. I was not expecting it at all. Especially since I live pretty close to Stanford. Nonetheless, I felt very homesick those first couple weeks, but I didn’t really want to go home, because I figured I would never get used to it if I did. Sure enough, the feeling went away and I started to get used to it. I still talked to my parents on the phone once a week, but the desire to go home was gone.

I wanted to go home after the second day I was on campus. I called my mom and told her I hated it and I ended up crying about all the reasons I thought I made a bad decision attending the school I’m still at. I grew up in SF and this was the first time I’d ever lived outside of the state (my school is in Illinois).

My mom told me that if I really didn’t like it after one quarter then I could come back, but leaving before school started would be a waste of money, especially since I shipped over $500 of stuff to my school. So we both agreed on it, and I realized that after my classes had started, I met a lot of other ppl who were slightly homesick and we all became friends. I also noticed that the busier I was with school, work and extra curricular activities, the less I focused on how much I wanted to go home.

This past winter quarter I really wanted to go home, so I took spring quarter off. Having that break from March through August was really nice, but now I’m ready for school to start back in about 2 weeks.

No, I lived at home during my first college years. Didn’t really leave home until I joined the Army.

I was kind of homesick for the first couple of months. But I remember that when I came back to school after Thanksgiving break, I sort of felt like I was “coming home” when I returned to campus. After that, I was in pretty good shape.

actually the first year I got the house to myself when my Father took off with his girlfriend to mexico…I starved and failed out of the first year….when nuts and moved away and lived with my mom… went back to university and failed out and told my mom that I need a place to stay for a few months… its been 10 years

I never wanted to go home, and I did not feel one single moment of homesickness. I was so excited to go to college, and most of my expectations were correct. The one thing that surprised me was the fact that some of the other students in the religious college were not the least bit religious. I was shocked.

No, when I went away to college I couldn’t get far enough, fast enough.

Any updates?

Oh I thought I had updated! Thanks @bob_ !

She is very happy now in school She is getting nearly straight A’s and has met a young man who asked her to homecoming. :D

Thanks everyone!

Yay!

I second that Yay!

Yay!-3