I live about an hour and a half from home and I go home on most 3 day weekends (most college students who live close do) and holiday breaks so around 2 or 3 times a semester. I really would recommend going home columbus day weekend if you can too, campuses are usually a ghost town then
@laurrodes, I actually don’t have an extended weekend for Columbus Day weekend. My only extended break during fall semester is Thanksgiving break. We don’t get a “fall break.”
In my experience, it depends on the family. My relationship with my mother and stepfather is extremely bitter and they live 1200 miles away and don’t pay any of my educational costs, so I don’t see them and barely talk to them. My grandmother has a house an hour and a half’s train ride away (A house I lived in through two years of community college and used as respite from my mothed and stepfather as a child. If I have a family home, it’s hers.), but I don’t go there much. I see my grandmother every month or two, but we meet somewhere between my city and hers, rather than me going home. I do go to her house for Christmas and such, though. My father comes up to my city a couple times a month. He lives in San Jose and I in San Francisco (San Jose is actually my hometown), so it’s an easy journey, but I don’t go to San Jose much these days.
It’s probably just as well that I not go home much. I have issues being independent, and constantly going home would make it worse. The current status quo of being close enough to easily see family but rarely going home to do so seems to work out rather well.