Fight Homesickness, think of CSC as home

Take a lesson from the wise makers of clichés:  the road to life success is always under construction.

We all face roadblocks.  It was just two weeks ago many of us faced an almost universal roadblock among college students: feeling homesick.

Let’s rewind two weeks from today in order to refresh ourselves on what happened. Fall break was just about to begin and each of us was preparing for how we were going to spend it.

For those who prepared to go home, and whose home is close to Chadron, preparation likely meant packing a suitcase with a few pairs of clothes and a toothbrush.

For those whose home is a couple hundred miles from Chadron, preparation likely meant a suitcase plus a cup of coffee, along with a phone call to mom saying, “I’m coming home for the first time this semester, Mom!  Get ready to feed me!” For others whose home is far away, preparation for fall break meant something different.

It meant calling home after stabilizing one’s emotions to say, “Hi Mom… actually I will not be able to make it home, I am sorry.  Yes, the Caf and Grille are closed, but I can eat at McDonald’s.  Yes Mom, my friends have left already… Dad wants to talk?  Yes Mom, you can give the phone to Dad now.  I love you, too.”

Those who fit in the last category are  likely to have felt homesick, but even those who were fortunate enough to go home likely did too. If you went home during fall break, the moment you began struggling with homesickness might have been when you said your final goodbye to your mother.

It might have been halfway through your chatty drive back to Chadron when you noticed, rather than talking to your dad, you were talking to the moonlight spilled in the seat beside you.

Maybe it was when you got back to campus and, nearing your hall’s front desk where a night worker sat alone, you noticed the sign-in sheet. Your friends’ names were all on the sheet from the time they visited your room before fall break.

You would sure have loved to see them then, because you were feeling empty, but they all had places to be, and then you realized that is how your parents feel about you whenever they see reminders of you around the house.

No matter how close home may be, almost all of us were reminded of a struggle we face this fall break. That is the bad news.

The good news is that because almost all of us face this,  we know what each other is, or will be, going through. I know of no greater forces than love and friendship when it comes to helping people through times of struggle.

Love is what binds family together through struggles, and friendship is what binds us through them.

So if, and when, you are dealing with homesickness, you can let us- your friends at college –make CSC your home away from home.

While it is true that the road to life success is always under construction, you can always make friends with someone who has a helicopter. Then you can fly right over the construction and life will be all like “what?”