A College Far Away from Home

Last week we explored going to a local college. Now let's examine the other side of that. What does it mean to go to a college far away from home? There are many factors to consider in the distance equation.

Perhaps the most important factor is your comfort with and ability to be away from family and friends for long periods of time. I have known students who because they went to schools far away only made it home twice during the academic year (a period from August to May - 9 months). Will you be satisfied with electronic communication, or maybe more realistically, will your parents and family (think grandma) be satisfied and competent with email, IM, and/or Skype? If they aren't can you put up with constant grumbling about being so far away?

It is possible that you could come home more, but this will require money and time. Notice that I just added two more factors to the equation: money and time. If you are looking at a school that is going to stretch your budget, then you have to think about the reality of making it home more than a couple of times a year. Even if you aren't stretching your budget, you have to think about time. When you go home, you want to visit and have fun. Will you have the time to also work on reading, writing, and preparing for classes? I wouldn't count on the flight or drive home to be a time when you can do any quality studying.

A last, though not only, factor to consider is your ability to thrive in new social settings away from friends and others you feel comfortable around. Do you make friends easily? Do you feel comfortable being around total strangers without family or old friends to rely on? Many students are just dying to "start over" and others can't imagine having to go through the whole headache of making new friends. Most people are somewhere along the continuum between these two extremes and will probably do just fine. But before making the distance decision, consider some of these factors first.

Going to a College Close to Home

Most colleges, no matter their prestige or location, have a significant portion of their student population that come from the local area. Depending on where you are located, the local area could mean a city, a county, neighboring counties, or a state (as with rural states like Montana, or even some of the small Northeastern states, like Vermont). For many students, choosing a college that is relatively close to home is important. I went to a univeristy that was about 60 miles from where I grew up. I considered that local, but not too local.

The reason I said that my university wasn't too local has to do with something that I believe is a very important process that occurs in college. Part of being 18 or 20 (in my case - I was a transfer student) and going to college is about maturation. A healthy individual is able to have a life and experience both outside and inside their family. Part of development is independence. It was my opinion when I chose my university that becoming independent required that I get some distance between myself and my family. I didn't want to always be coming home on the weekends, although I wanted to have the option to fairly easily come home when I did want to see my family.

If you choose to go to a very local college, and by that I mean a college where you would probably live at home and commute to campus, developing independence is not as easy. It is still possible and occurs all the time. However, if mom still makes your dinner and washes your dirty clothes, you are not really graduating into adulthood. Therefore, if you are considering going to a very local college, I ask you to think about this notion of independence as I have described it. Does it sound like something that is important to you? Do you believe that you can develop a healthy independence and still live at home (or at least live within a 15 minute drive from home)? Maybe you are like I was when I chose where to go to college, you want to the distance to form an independent identity, but you also want to be able to come home and eat mom's good cooking once in a while.