So after getting denied from my first pick I’ve decided to go the my other option and that is Tennessee. I still have a couple more months until I go to college and my parents and I are planning on visiting the college next month. My main question is has anyone ever experienced going to a college or university that is about 7 or 8 hours away from home and what did your parents do before you left? Also how was your first night in a different college and was there any challenges to look out for when going to another state?
Congrats on getting into your other option! I’m at Vanderbilt right now, and it’s 6 hours from my home town in another state. It is weird at first, but a lot of it depends on you as a person. If you (like me) are used to seeing/talking to your parents daily and in general are close to them, it’s harder than if you kind of have some distance between you and them.
Before I left, we did a lot of special things, like I decided what food we’d have that week, and saw a lot of other relatives. The first week or so here were actually pretty busy, so getting to sleep wasn’t too hard, haha.
Thanks @SusieAnne. I’m planning on going to Maryville, and the thing I was worried about the most was that I am kind of a city girl and Maryville seemed like a small place to live and I think I will have to adjust my big city ways. But its good that my mom is already planning on doing things for the first half of August including my birthday, so I’m pretty excited for whats coming up.
Again, thanks for the feedback.
Hey @chearia08! I’m a sophomore at the University of Iowa right now and I’m about 5-6 hours away from home. To be honest, I’ve had an incredibly awful time being so far away from home. Last year I went through a serious bout of homesickness and was considering transferring, but I ended up deciding on staying at Iowa because I thought it’d be better this year. But here I am again, considering transferring closer to home again. This totally depends on how close you are with your family/parents. I know people who are at college way farther away than I am, and they totally love it because they weren’t all that close with their parents and they hated their hometown.
I wish you the best of luck with whatever you choose!!
The college I will be going to is OOS and about 9 hrs away from home. I keep thinking weird things these days, like “1 year from now, you will being your second semester at WSU” and “that was the last Thanksgiving meal that I will probably cook for my family for at least a couple years” and “it’s only 6 months until you move away from home.” I range from “can’t wait to go there and get started!” to “OMG, what am I doing? Is this for real? What will I do? What will happen? What if…”
@Albert69 lol I thought I was the only one. @collegegirl421 thanks for the honesty, I’m really close to my mom but feel like I need to get some distance from her for the sake of growing up and being on my own. My dad and I on the other hand are semi-close, basically on and off when it comes down to bonding. But hopefully the homesickness wont be too bad for me.
I think once you are at college, it doesn’t matter if you are 5 minutes or 5 hours away on the first night. Your parents are a phone call (remember those?) away. You will be talkign to your roommate, hall mates, and people in your dorm. You should be going to all freshman orientation activities and signing up for clubs that interest you.
You should talk to your parents about when they expect you to come home. For Thanksgiving and Christmas?
If there is a Parents weekend, you can tell while you always like to see them, you can understand if they can’t make it.
Also talk to them about how often you will contact them. Maybe you will call once a week. Maybe you text all the time so it won’t be different.
Also make sure you have a friend that is more local so if you have a fall break or what not you could go home with them.
As far as what they do before you leave…I am sure they would be interested in spending time with you and do just about anything you want.You will probably want to do stuff with your friends at the end, but carve out time with your parents.
My daughter went 13 hrs away for first semester. She ended up not caring for the program and is now applying closer to home. She made a lot of great friends, but just wasn’t as thrilled with the program as she had hoped.
It was helpful to us to order most of what she needed for the dorm from Bed Bath and Beyond. They have it all put together at the store closest to the school. That allowed us to pick up a car load of stuff there vs renting a uhaul or SUV. The school also had a service that we ordered care packages through and they were sent periodically. A lot less than the postage to mail care packages.