How Often Should I Go Home From College?
Attending college within a few hours or less from home comes with many challenges. One of the trickiest is knowing how often you should go home. So, is visiting home often a good idea? And why or why not? Before giving any opinion I want you to consider this question: how does visiting home frequently impact you? Does it benefit or harm you in the long run?
While each college student’s experience is different, college freshmen experience more negative than positive effects if they come home too frequently. Learn how visiting home too often impacts you negatively in these 4 ways.
1. You fail to develop independence.
While living away from home can be uncomfortable and lonely (especially for a freshman), habitually visiting home actually does more harm than good. Visiting home takes away opportunities from you that a freshman who cannot visit home has. Don’t allow your homesickness or loneliness take you home every weekend!
This is the time to develop adult skills, like meeting new people. Pushing yourself to get out of your comfort zone will be difficult, however, if you are not around during the times where there is more opportunities to stretch yourself (aka the weekends), you will not likely struggle to develop some important adult skills during our first semester.
Choose to learn how to navigate this new home away from home by only visiting home occasionally. Otherwise, you will struggle to do develop the independent, adult skills you truly need.
2. You misspend valuable time and money.
Traveling costs you time and money. You are limited in both of these resources, especially now that you’re in college. Carefully consider how much traveling home weekend after weekend costs you.
Even if you live relatively close to college, paying for gasoline adds up quickly. If you live only a few hours away from home, your trip there and back can easily require a full tank of gas. If you grab snacks or caffeine to fuel you as the driver, you have another costly expense. Is this really the best way to spend your limited money?
Traveling home realistically takes up more time than merely traveling in the car. You have to unpack, catch up with your family, do some laundry, hang out with family and friends, and then if you have time do some homework. (Realistically, the homework part probably won’t happen.) Doing this every weekend costs you valuable time you could be using to complete homework and build relationships at college.
This is the time to invest yourself in college fully. Your time and money need to be concentrated on finishing your college degree, so carefully consider the cost of going home each weekend.
3. You struggle to develop relationships at college.
If you travel home every weekend, developing relationships with other college students will be difficult. These frequent trips make getting plugged in even more challenging. Integrating into college life will be much easier if you stay at college during most weekends.
I find that many new students who go home most weekends or every weekend find themselves caught in this weird in-between stage, where they don’t fit in at home or at college. Because they don’t spend enough time in either place, they feel caught in the middle like they’re living a weird twilight zone.
Learning how to make friends in a new context is an incredibly valuable skill. Take the time to learn how to meet people and build meaningful connection. This skill is valuable throughout your life but harder to learn later on in your college or post-college years. You will definitely feel uncomfortable and awkward at times, but keep at it. Making new friends in new places will pay off, and you will find people you truly enjoy being with at college.
4. You fail to learn how to navigate long-term relationships.
When you finish college, you will most likely live away from home. If you don’t learn how to navigate relationships from afar now, you won’t know how to maintain your relationships post-college either.
High school friends, family, and significant others deeply miss you. However, they (hopefully) realize you cannot be home every weekend. Your focus is on your college education right now. Even though you love and miss them, you need to visit home sparingly.
If you visit home too often, you will rob yourself of the college experience. This time is a valuable time to develop skills and abilities that will help you grow not only as a student but as a person. Allow yourself to grow by choosing to maintain relationships at home but from a distance through phone calls and FaceTime calls.
Living away from home may not be as exciting as you maybe once thought. While there are definite advantages to living in the college dorms, there are definite drawbacks as well. Limit your time at home so that you can fully benefit from this time at college!
