This is the first post from my daughter LakeGirl. I hope to have more thoughts from the “front lines” as the year progress! Let us know what you think! – LakeMom

Summer Vacation – Time to get away from everyone at school and be back at home with family and old friends or that’s what it used to be. I don’t think I’ve had a real summer vacation since the summer after my senior year in high school. Ever since I got into college my summers have been filled with internships. Which have been awesome.

After my freshmen year I worked at Cedar Point, yes the amusement park. Which for those of you who don’t know is in Ohio, which is about 600 miles away from home for me. I was lucky enough for my family to come and visit me that summer and spend time with me. I was gone for 3 months, basically the entirety of my summer. This was the first time I had been away from my family for such an extended period of time.

See my college is 30 mins away from home. Now I know what you are thinking, “you’re so close you can see them whenever you want.” For me this is not true, I am far too busy with my studies to get home and they are busy with school and sports and Girl Scouts and everything else you do when you are younger, basically it’s hard to see each other even being 30 mins away.

The next summer I was at a wonderful place call Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, which is in Becket, MA and 700 miles away from home. Unfortunately my family could not make it out to see me last summer.

And this summer I am at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY, which is around 650 miles away from home. This summer just like last they will not be able to visit. What makes this summer harder for me is that I don’t have cell phone service where I live and work. So I can’t just call up mom and see how everyone back home is doing or text my best friends and see how their vacations are going. I know when we go away to college we get all excited about independence from our parents and making our own decisions and being a grown-up. But when you are away from your family for 3 months, it can seem like an eternity when you get homesick.

To break it down, the first month it’s all exciting to be in a new place, whether it’s college or summer or whatever, you are adjusting. The second month you are getting into a rhythm of things. Near the end of month 2 and the start of month 3 you start to get a little homesick. This is where I am at now. You have such little time left at the place you are at, which means you are closer to getting home. Which is very exciting because you miss friends or family from home. But then you start to think about having to say goodbye to everyone here as well and that makes you even sadder, so now you’re just a huge mess, right?

Well some things to help get over the homesickness and to continue to have a goodtime without being sad about leaving:

• Talk to your family and friends, when you stay in contact over the summer it makes it easier to feel like you haven’t just left the real world for the world you are in for 3 months.
• Have pictures of your family and friends in the place you are staying now, it makes it seem like they are there with you.
• Hanging with the friends you have there, you are bound to have made some friends at the place you are now.

So play card games, watch a movie, have a bonfire, have a girly night or manly (whichever you prefer .) Take lots of pictures they are the best way to remember the good times and look back on the great friends you have made. And eat cookie dough.

How do you get rid of homesickness?

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