Have you ever suffered from homesickness? Haven’t you? Homesickness is “the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home” (Thurber C., 2012). Homesickness is mostly seen in college students, and that is a fact many would agree on. Students suffering from homesickness will gradually have their performance diminish, and this will affect their grades by dropping significantly.
This is because homesickness can cause many health problems such as depression, anxiety, and lack of sleep (Bizymoms). Homesickness can have very bad effects on students if not dealt with, and honestly, I didn’t see any efforts from ISU, in general, to help student overcome homesickness. Maybe the ISU staff is thinking that homesickness is a normal thing that everybody can get away with. Well, I would like to help ISU Health Center to address this problem and provide a solution, and this is mainly because I am one of the people who suffered from being homesick.
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"Homesickness: A Serious Problem".
When students leave their homes and come to struggle to get a degree, I believe that the university need to be able to help those students by every way possible. Moreover, since “Understanding the relationship between psychological or mental distress and homesickness has been the topic of a number of studies” (Tochkov K., 2010), helping students to deal with homesickness should be a main priority. In addition, “prior research suggests that depression, anxiety, and poor academic performance do indeed result from an educational transition” and that is transferring from a school to another, which homesickness is part of.
Homesickness can be caused by so many things, and that is because it’s our nature as humans to miss what is precious to us when we can’t find a substitute for this precious thing. This includes family, friends, your hometown, your room, your bed, your car, etc… . The risk factors have actually been classified by Thurber into five categories: experience, personality, family, attitude, and environment (Thurber, C., 2007). Experience is having had no dealings with the novel environment before (which is a common case for many students). Attitude factors concern negative first impressions and low expectations regarding the new environment. Personality factors concern insecure attachment to primary caregivers, which is possible in case of any student, who had been living with the parents and had a good relationship with them before leaving the safe shade of the natural household. Family factors arise with low decision control in the student’s earlier life. Environmental factors come in play when a student experiences high cultural contrast.
I order to be more precise, let us consider the following situation: imagine that you are having a problem with your roommate. You would definitely miss your room, your home, and your family that lived with you. So, if we calculated how many things students, who are studying away from their homes, will yearn to, we could know how many causes are there for homesickness. Ranging from problems with roommates to different food and culture, we have a big variety of causes of homesickness: the different food, the different culture, the different lifestyle, different language, different city, different friends, different house, etc.
Fortunately, this big problem could be solved easily. This solution would be making a club, a small one, and advertise about it around campus. Anyone one who is experiencing homesickness can join this club. Homesickness is fought by keeping these people busy, and to do so a schedule containing three main activities should be set.
First of all, the first activity is the easiest to make. ISU Health Center could provide an empty room or a class and gather the members of this club. This activity’s main goal is to make those members know that they’re not alone; many of ISU students are feeling homesick. Knowing that “by sharing your feelings you will find yourself relaxed and easy”, this activity would be very helpful. If we calculated how much this going to cost, it would be nothing. Firstly, the room we the members well gather is already available. Secondly, this activity would requires only one person to supervise on the students. It could be a volunteer, or a person that would be willing to work for an hour or two for one day, and this wouldn’t cost much. It goes without saying that humans are sociable creatures, so such type of support is truly vital to sustain the mental well-being of those under the influence of homesickness.
The second activity would be an informative class with a mini activity such as lunch together. And by informative, I mean informing and teaching the members of the club about homesickness. The main goal of this activity would be teaching the member that homesickness is common among college students, and that it is completely normal to feel homesick. The reason that there should be a mini activity involved, is because not to make this look like a class, and therefore it would be boring. A lunch or an outside activity such as soccer or volleyball would be great to entertain the members.
In addition, this will help them to make new connections, which will help them fight homesickness. This activity would cost more than the first one, but it is totally worth it. If the lunch together activity is chosen, then there is a high chance it would be fast food. Since, McDonald’s is cheap, it would be a good choice. Imagine there would be around 30 students in this activity, getting each one a McChicken sandwich would cost exactly 32.7 dollars. Adding 5 family-sized Pepsi to the calculation would make it around $45. About the room, the ISU Health Center could use the same room from the previous activity. The same supervisor could be used, or it can be just another one. All of this could be so easy on our university’s health center. It just like treating any disease.
The third activity is a trip. Some students don’t know that there are some entertaining places and things to do around ISU. The Health Center could arrange a trip to Chubbuck mall, the Pocatello zoo, or just to have picnic in any of Pocatello’s mountains or parks. The trips might vary in costs, but everything has it value. Recalling depression is associated with homesickness, a trip to the mall or to the zoo would kick the depression away. A trip to the mall wouldn’t cost much, the club could use the buses, or just meet in the mall. Shopping with new people is a nice experience that would help to deal with homesickness. For this specific trip, it would require only a supervisor to teach some students how to use the buses or how to get to the mall.
The other trips could cost slightly more than the mall trip, but it would be a better experience. For example, offering a ride to the mountains would be difficult, so the club would change its plan and go to a park. Some people might want to go to other places or they hate the place the club is going to. A vote could solve this, the club offer some places that are available, and then members vote to their favorite place. Another good idea, would be getting help with the Outside Activity Center (OAC). The Homesickness Fighting Club could get some help from OAC or even going out in some activities with them. The OAC offers many great activities such as horseback riding and snow skiing.Since Pocatello is a small town, this would be a good idea.
The club is a good idea, but there are some difficulties there always have been that could face the Health Center, there always have been. There might be some activities that costs too much, and this is could be solved by organizing a donation part in the club. If the people like the club and founded that the club helped them, which they will, they would definitely donate. Another obstacle would be that student would not know that this club exist, well this easy to deal with. Some posters around campus will solve this problem, just like the elections.
The last, but not the least, fourth idea, is setting up cultural appreciation days. For instance, designate each Friday to be a day of culture and, therefore, encourage students to participate in the evenings of a particular culture celebration. It will help considerably those, who would be representatives of the culture celebrated and help others to reach out, find out more about it. The representatives of the culture of the evening would have a wonderful possibility to tell about one’s home, traditions, and other things that make them homesick. Talking about such things out loud with a group of people should really prove a remarkable alleviation. I would like to note immediately, that this idea is not applicable to exchange students from other countries only. The United States is a big country, with many local cultures, traditions, and other local peculiarities, which are waiting to be discovered.
To sum up, homesickness has been and will be something that every student studying away from home would suffer from. Ignoring the problem would not benefit any side involved directly or indirectly n this issue. The students will most probably suffer from getting worse grades due inability to concentrate and move on with the homesickness feeling while the university would have to deal with increasing percentage of lower grades and general miserable atmosphere within the campus. In addition, homesickness causes many health problems such as depression, anxiety, and lack of sleep. However, all of this could be dealt with a club that is organized for students to meet new students while doing some activities. So, ISU Health Center, what are you waiting for?
