Words by Lucy Charlton
With Christmas around the corner, many of us are booking our train tickets and packing our bags to spend time with our families. With the lure of warm meals and a dishwasher, many may be looking forward to this return home, but others could be fearing the impending restrictions and lack of freedoms afforded by student life. Every break in the semester seems to expose these thoughts, perhaps evoking larger questions about the notion and nature of home as a student.
The opportunity to come to a new city, a new environment, away from the past with a clean slate is an alluring and exciting prospect, and is one of the main draws towards university. However, reality is far from the romantic scenes depicted in films.
When stripped back, the experience of moving to a new city to study is the process of uprooting all you have ever known to come to a completely unknown place, one that you may have only visited once or twice for an open day, to attempt to create a new life and new normal, surrounded by complete strangers. It is daunting and unsettling, and the gravity of this is perhaps overlooked and not talked about enough.
Moving away from home for university is a major shift in your life, but yet many struggle to discuss this openly, and there often seems to be a sense of shame if you admit to feeling homesick. The attempt to maintain a pretence of enjoying the ‘uni experience’ takes precedence over being open about feeling on edge in an unfamiliar environment.
Once you have begun to be settled, a reading week or holiday break occurs. We pack ourselves back up and deal with trains to get back to our families – only to get somewhat settled again for the long break. However, within a matter of weeks, this cycle is repeated and we are soon back at university. This constant cycle can be unsettling and unnerving, and somewhat disturbs notions of home and familiarity as where we struggle to settle into a routine in one location.
There seems to be a certain liminality and suspension when at university, suspended between two places and perhaps as a result of this, never feeling settled in either. This suspension needs to be talked about more to reassure those experiencing the unsettling consequences.
Moving away is not all bad. Amid the anxiety of feeling comfortable, we are lucky enough to be afforded with the opportunity to live independently and find ourselves at university. The joy in finding a new home and laying new foundations both in place and people is one that is unique and precious. Although it takes time, the immersion into a new place is surreal given that you can feel so comfortable with somewhere and someone, despite knowing them for such a small amount of time.
Although cliché, a fond university family is perhaps one of the most important and long-lasting results of completing university. The relationships and experiences that are discovered during our years in Manchester are just as important as our academic development, and the ability to persevere and find a new sense of place within us is an invaluable experience.
Home, therefore, is a concept that seems to evolve as we grow. It is dynamic and ever-changing, but these changes can be disconcerting and unsettling at times, and it is important to honour this. However you feel about home, it is valid, and be reassured that all students are trying to navigate these significant, and often turbulent changes in our lives and relationships. By embracing this unknown, we can perhaps discover home isn’t just one place, but many, and therefore is an opportunity for us to find new spaces, connections, and versions of ourselves.
