i miss home by Hala K. '29

I took my first exam last week. And in my two semesters’ worth of experience, the first exam marks the start of the end. Prior to the first exam:

• You only have psets to worry about – which in and of itself is a lot but not nearly as stressful as finishing psets AND studying for an exam.
• The content hasn’t completely built on itself yet so if lecture 2 doesn’t make sense, you can probably still piece together what lecture 3 is about.
• You don’t actually know how you are doing in any of your classes. You can convince yourself that even though none of the content makes sense to you – you will pull the biggest lock in of all time and somehow, the exams will feel light.
• You don’t think about your final grade nearly as much. You are missing too many important numbers to actually know what you’d get if you got X score on the final.

However, once the first exam passes, all of these statements become false.

It seems like the exams will NEVER end. One week is 6.1910 and the next is 2.001 and 6.1210 ON THE SAME DAY. (Can you tell this isn’t a hypothetical?)

my friend from home texting me about reading over her college apps

i had to be honest...

"this week" has just ended for context - next is much worse. don't worry though we worked out times - she has me "booked" for October 19th and on

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And to make matters worse, while you were studying for exam #1, you probably said “well I’m going to focus on ___ class for this week and will just catch up on the rest next week, post-exam.” However, there is a fundamental flaw in this plan because post-exam #1 = pre-exam #2 – so how will you catch up when you need to study for exam #2. Something has got to give – and it usually comes down to sleep or your willingness to leave an assignment unsubmitted.

And the cycle repeats, over and over again, until the semester finishes, And then starts all over again the next semester.

It’s incredibly draining – you’re tired, studying constantly, looking at exam scores and being disappointed that you didn’t do quite as good as you wanted to, trying to find time to see people so you don’t completely hole yourself up in your room.

Though what makes this harder, is that these feelings are directly proportional to feelings of homesickness.  Specifically, as the year goes on, you are getting more tired at the same rate that you are feeling more and more homesick.

You are realizing that this is no longer some “temporary” place that you are visiting but instead, it’s your new normal. You miss the support systems that were already built up for you at home. You miss your dad bringing tangerines and the crunchiest green grapes for you to snack on as you work. You miss those super-tight hugs your mom gives you when you’re stressed, or her barging into your room to distract you with funny stories about her students. You really really really miss the delicious Lebanese food your mom cooks (you genuinely dream of warak enab and mloukhieh).

You miss just being in your house – sleeping in your comfy bed, studying in the best desk chair, hearing your sisters arguing in the room beside you, helping your mom grade some papers while you pick up a new tv show together.

You miss your friends – the drives with olivia rodrigo blasting, the late night blizzard⁠01 as in the dairy queen ones, not the weather ones runs, laughing about the same inside joke you probably laughed at the day before but somehow doesn’t seem to get any less funny.

You miss having hobbies – reading in your backyard with your huge tree shielding you from the sun, binge watching sitcoms, learning a new variant of sudoku, and most importantly, just laying down doing absolutely nothing.

You miss home.

And if this blog didn’t already make it incredibly clear – “you” is me.

I miss home. A lot.

But a lot of people I’ve spoken to recently have shared similar sentiments.

We miss home.

The issue is that I unfortunately don’t have a solution for this. It’s a pretty sad way to end the blog but I have too many complicated and conflicting thoughts on this topic that seem to change every day.

I think that it’s normal to genuinely love where you are while desperately missing where you were before. I think I’m starting to get how IHTFP.

Though, one note on this is that my homesickness differs significantly from how it felt freshman year. After spending a whole year saying “all I want to do is go home,” when I was home this summer, there were a couple moments where I thought to myself: I kind of want to be back at MIT right now.

I have “real” friends here now. I no longer consider them “MIT friends” who are distinct from those back home but actual ones that I genuinely love so so so much (sorry to my friends if you are reading this and realize that you must have hit a promotion at some point in the past year). I’m always excited for dinner to finally see them again and catch up on the inevitably embarrassing things that happened to us that day. I’m comfortable ranting to them about all of my stresses and admitting when I feel like I suck at MITing. They make me laugh until my stomach hurts and make me lose The Game almost every day (i don’t know if this is a niche pull). Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.

Anyways… potentially more helpful, I wanted to share the playlist I made last year that I usually listen to when the homesickness seems to take over. Fair warning: I don’t believe in playlists making you feel better about something. Instead, I think they should actually make you feel worse. More specifically, I listen to a lot of sad music, so my playlists tend to reflect that.