Moving out

By: Young Person

Needing a change of scenery

At the end of year 12 I was completed exhausted. I'd had a tough year and to top it off I didn't get the marks I wanted to in my final exams and missed out on the course that I had always dreamed of. I had a really difficult time coming to terms with not getting the results I set out for. At times I just wanted to curl up in bed and never get out again.

I decided that I needed a change of scenery, so when the opportunity came up for me to study in another state it was one that I seized. Over a month after the University offers came out I packed up everything and moved to the other side of the country. Many of my friends told me I was insane, but I just wanted to get as far away as possible and start again, where people didn't know what I'd been through in the past, so there were no expectations.

I thought moving away would be a piece of cake. Somehow I believed that by being far away from home, would mean that any thing that was getting me down would be far away as possible. I soon found out that this wasn't going to be the case.

My first week or so at University was absolute hell. We were doing heaps of fun activities and it was great to be a new city and meeting new people, but I just couldn't shake this overwhelming homesick feeling. There were so many times that week I just wanted to jump on the first plane back home.

I remember standing in the Dean's office a few days after I arrived and having the Dean ask me how I was settling it and having to fight back the tears. "It's great" I lied. "I'm having a great time."

But I stuck it out. About a week after leaving home I decided that I was going to make the most of the opportunity that I had been given. I put up some photos in my room of my friends from home and of my home city to remind me of them and tried to keep in contact with my friends via e-mail. When I started to feel down and was missing home I thought about all the positives of living away from home - the freedom, the new friends I was making and the new places I was able to visit.

I soon found that the homesick feeling went away and I really started to enjoy my time away from home. That feeling still comes back sometimes, but if I concentrate on the positives rather than the negatives, it passes quite quickly.