While college is a great experience regardless of where you attend, there are significant differences between those who still live at home while they earn their degree, and those who choose to go to a college far away from where they grew up.
There are a lot of things you learn when you move out for college, and while simply moving into a dorm room 30 minutes from your family’s home is eye-opening and life-changing, it still isn’t at the same level as those who put hundreds or thousands of miles between their home and college campus.
Because when you move far away for college…
- You become more independent and self-sufficient. When you are unable to take a quick drive home every weekend when you are feeling homesick, you are forced to learn a new way of sitting with your discomfort and battling through it. In turn, you tend to gain a sense of independence at an expedited rate.
- You become more cultured. When you move to a different state you are immediately aware of the fact that the way your town/state operates isn’t the same as people in other places. From the types of people you are around, and the accents they have, to the restaurants and stores available to you and the sports teams people worship, you are likely exposed to different perspectives, behaviors and traditions you weren’t before.
- You are more adventurous. Obviously if you make the decision to pack up and move to a different state you have never lived in before, you already have a sense of adventure. But this characteristic in you is only strengthened when you realize just how capable you are of adapting to change, making you more willing to do it as frequently as possible. If you could make a new state feel like home, why not another country? Study abroad, here I come!
- You get a new-found appreciation for your family and home friends. You know what they say: Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Putting thousands of miles between you and your family/friends, who you once took for granted, makes you value the relationships with those people at a whole new level. When they’re not always around and accessible, it makes you miss all the little things you once took for granted. Plus, you learn who your true friends are by who actually makes the effort to stay in touch.
- You make the most of the time you do spend home. When you have to shell out a few hundred in airline tickets every time you go home, which is really only a few times out of the year, and tend to become less and less with each year you’re at college, you tend to make the most of the short time you do spend there, absorbing as much as you possibly can, while you can, knowing it’ll be over before you know it. You no longer resent your family’s presence because you now know what it is like when you can’t have it.
- You realize how small your world was before college. They say that when you leave a place, and later return, you look at it with new eyes. When you move away to college, one of the biggest, life altering experiences you will have is returning, only to realize how little has changed– and makes you wonder how much else is out there waiting for you to see. What you once thought was your entire world, your hometown, you now realize is just a very, very small, sometimes suffocating spec of the world.
- You become a pro at packing and traveling. It only takes a few rounds of packing/unpacking for a semester to learn how few clothes you actually wear versus what you pack. You become well-versed in packing a bag that weighs less than 50 pounds, which airlines always end up being horrific to fly, and exactly how much time you need to get to the airport and through security on time.
- You get to completely redefine yourself. One of the best things about moving far away to college is that you get an incredible opportunity to redefine yourself, to abandon who you were known as in your hometown and throughout high school, and be whoever you want to be, without judgment. It’s a fresh start, a clean slate, a blank canvas… where no one knows you yet and can’t say anything you do or say is “unlike you.” And that’s really liberating.
