home, sick, home

Entering the portal of university life makes perfect sense to me. This advances my best foot in the course of realization of my dream. Beyond that door beckons my earnest childhood aspiration to be somebody, and with this goal, other positive signs in the offing immediately lure my vision: higher educational insights and philosophies, more permanent values and friends, lucrative opportunities left and right, a lifetime partner perhaps.
Meanwhile, it vividly occurs to me that university life is not at all a bed of roses. I consider from the very beginning that eventually, problems will thrive as much as, if not greater than, blessings. While I pass through the main gate of the university, I instantly experience many ordeals which may render myself a big loser if such challenges surmount me. Take that absurd feeling termed homesickness, for instance.
Homesickness is a nasty syndrome in the university that incessantly strikes most of my fellow college freshmen, sometimes even old students, who hail from distant places like Isabela, Aurora, Pampanga, or Tarlac and who decide to live inside or near the campus for the mean time. During their first week (months if worse) or stay either in dormitories or in boarding houses, these newcomers go restless and lonely because of the altered home atmosphere. They have no mother to cook and to do the laundry for them, no father to ask additional allowance from, and no personal room in which to perform private rituals separately. More likely, they never readily receive the warm, loving care or their stranger and often snobbish of quarrelsome roommates. They find their seldom—cleaned surroundings rather unfit for absorbing everyday lessons in school, much more for living. In the long run, all of them get too homesick, prepare to pack their effects up and flee at once to their homes.
In my own case wherein I presently reside several miles away from my hiding place, I have gradually learned to adapt to my totally new environment. Like anyone else, I have considered it difficult at first to fight the urge of returning early to my parents’ arms. I may have not reached the alarming point of wailing and regressing because I miss my family terribly; just the same, I have mused that I solely belong to my former world. What strategies have later helped me beat vulnerability?
I have preoccupied myself in studies. Whenever anxiety sets in, I run my eyes over my previous lessons, try writing, or work on tomorrow’s assignment. Also, I participate actively in class to forget sentimentality a while. I do not attempt to be unfeeling of anything; I only want to cast off the premature arrest of familial missing. After all, studying is all I am here for, so I ready myself for my future through studying hard.
Likewise, I have enriched the social being in me. I have become acquainted with campus figures of all sorts: classmates, dorm mates, friends of my colleagues, professors, student officers, even university officials, all of whom have boosted my morale in one way or another. Breaking free from my shell, I have made friends with good, interesting people who have initially filled the void created by the absence of my kindred love one’s.
I get involved in worthwhile endeavors. If not busy, I promenade with friends inside the campus and enjoy its natural beauty. I also commit myself to recreational activities such as playing indoor games. Frequently, I just read current events articles to broaden my young horizon. Through all these, I have eased myself from enfeebling homesickness.
Finally, I have adjusted gracefully in day-to-day situations. My various traits have mixed well with those of others, withstanding alienation on my part or on theirs. Cite an example: if friends invite me for a stroll to this location or that, I nod sans hesitations, or, if I deem the walk purposeless or I have to attend to other priorities, I decline politely. This way, I will be endeared to them, as they to me, then drawing out the family in my friends.
Once, I came across with the children’s fiction A Little Princess from which I paraphrased the following: it will not take long when a faraway student will grow and be able to reunite with his benefactor. Similarly, I will count a few years, end my temporal stay and come back to my parents. By that time, I shall have thoroughly overcome homesickness, have fully equipped myself for my competitive career and have provided complete meaning to my university life.