As week three comes to a close, I am suddenly finding myself already preparing for midterms, but that’s the quarter system for you. I’ve been in Southern California for a month now, and it’s quite different from the bay, that’s for sure. Temperatures reaching 90-100 daily, and the feeling of a hot, stickiness coming over me when I step outside, is bound to make me crave the cool breeze that Richmond had always brought me. It’s definitely a challenge, for me, who loves cold weather, but I guess that was one of the things that attracted me to an idea of a SoCal school. It’s been an interesting past weeks. I’ve explored the Hollywood Walk of Fame, discussed the struggles of the Native Americans in my Interracial Dynamics Class, learned about the different parts of the human brain in PsychBio class, and have definitely gotten a workout everyday from all the hills and stairs on campus. It’s the college life I was expecting, but at the same time, it wasn’t.
While doing some readings for my Interracial Dynamics class, I came upon a chapter titled “Homesickness”, where it described how many Native American children who were forced to attend boarding schools faced extreme homesickness due to being kept away from their families for such long periods of time. Suddenly, it hit me. Though I had only been here for a month, it felt like I had been here for much longer than that. I started missing my family, my mother’s cooking, my bed. I started missing my friends back home, and our times together. I envied my friends who were able to go home easily on the weekends, but then I realized that this was something that everybody has to go through. I needed to be present in where I was, both mentally and physically, in order to get the most of what I came here for – a solid education. All my hard work was for getting me here, and I wasn’t going to sulk around and not get the most of it. Though I still feel a longing for my home, I’ve perked up a little, and slowly am able to begin calling this school of mine, home.
