By Joey Sammut

When I was 23 and freshly graduated from college, I decided (nearly on a whim) that I would move to Ohio for grad school. I packed my bags, bought a one-way plane ticket, and stepped foot on campus for the first time days before school started. My first night in my new apartment, it began to rain and thunder and lightning (a rarity in July for a California native!), and I finally began to think, “What did I just do???” I called my parents, and as soon as they answered the phone I started crying about how everything was different and I didn’t like it (mind you, I had only been in the state for a few hours at this point).

My mother immediately said that I was allowed to go right back to the airport, get on a plane, and come right back home. My dad said something a little different. He asked what exactly it was that was different, how I was feeling, and what my thoughts were. After that, he told me that he couldn’t assure me it wouldn’t be tough experience, but that he knew I was going to have a good time and I owed it to myself and the school to give it a shot.

Whenever my parents tell people this story, they always like to add that two years later I was again crying to them – this time because they had just picked me up from my one way flight back to California after finishing grad school, and I was so sad that my experience was over!

I tell you this story not to embarrass myself, but to share the following tidbits when it comes to homesickness and transition issues:

Homesickness isn’t just for freshmen. We tend to find that students across all grade levels tend to have some transition issues and longing for “the old days” – when they lived on-campus or in a more social residence hall, when their friends weren’t studying abroad for the year, when they were closer to their friends from high school, when they didn’t have to worry about graduation or the real world.

It’s perfectly normal to feed homesick. Who doesn’t long for a time that (through rose-colored glasses) was especially great? Normalizing these feelings for your student (who perceive that they’re the only one struggling) can be a great benefit.

Coping looks different for everyone. If your student is introverted, they might stay to themselves. If they’re gregarious, they could become even more so. There isn’t any one normal way to process through feelings of homesickness.

Abnormal coping can be alarming. Is schoolwork being affected? Are things gradually not “getting better”? Is there risky or troubling behavior? If so, then this could be when transitions and homesickness isn’t going so well and the university may want to help out.

Watch for warning signs. If your student has had a past experience with depression or mental health, transitioning to a new environment might trigger some old feelings or issues.

Listening can help. Just having my dad listen to me helped so much – to know that I could articulate my feelings externally helped immensely. Ask some open-ended questions and challenge their perceptions gently.

So, when your student calls you crying, I hope you listen to them, offer some words of advice, and maybe send them some cookies. And just know that you could very well have to deal with some tears in the future once they graduate and are leaving a place that they’ve truly come to cherish.