LIVE, your guide for student life September 2014 | Page 12

F

eeling lonely? Miss your home
and family? The majority new university students will suffer some
level of homesickness. Research
shows most of them can cope
within a few weeks.By the third
week all but a few have found
symptoms decreasing. How about
you?
There are several factors that
make people feel homesick,
such as, have been away from
home for the first time, low self
esteem, and have close emotional relationship with family or a
partner at home. For international students, everything seems get
harder since they have to adapt
with unfamiliar new culture.
“The advantage
of working in a
restaurant, beside
getting extra
money, I have free
meal!”
Faustina Myra (26),
BCU student

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Taken from a paper published
in Pediatrics, the journal of
the American Academy of
Pediatrics, Chris Thurber
and Edward Walton define
homesickness as “distress
and functional impairment
caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home and
attachment objects such as parents.”
Homesick is a normal part as a
students’ development towards
adulthood. By being homesick, it
tells you to realize certain needs
and to find solutions to satisfy that
uncomfortable feeling.
While you are tempted to going
back home when you’re homesick,
figuring out that feeling make you
grow into maturity. Yuying Wang,
who studies Marketing in Aston University, has been living in
Birmingham for almost 6 months.
It’s not easy for her to live far away
from her home in Beijing especially

“I did solo travel
for the first time to
Switzwerland last
Christmas. It was
exciting!”
Yuying Wang (24),
Aston University
student