You have learnt and changed – your family has remained the same

You have learnt and changed – your family has remained the same

You are really looking forward to the first visit home. Thinking of your family and community back home has sustained you through the first semester. Making them proud remains a major motivating factor. Beware – the reunion can be challenging.

Going away to university is about change. You never realised how much you were going to change. You have been exposed to a new world, new people, new situations. At first you may have been shocked. Perhaps you judged and condemned. Then you started questioning your own knowledge and moral framework. You felt lost. Who are you? Slowly, painfully, a new you began to emerge. As one student wrote when looking back on his first year:

I remember in first year when I was still vigilant and alert to everything new in my life. I was in a small group tutorial with one of the best people I have met at university, my first-year mentor. One of the most vivid moments of the whole experience is the time he told us that university is, more than anything, a prolonged self-defining period in an individual’s life. He carried on to explain that the university years will determine who an individual is and that if one leaves university without having learnt who they are, chances are that they will struggle even further.

I have been through multiple life-changing situations throughout my three years at the university but none of them have been as fruitful in experience and growth as this year.

Change and growth are painful but they are valuable. Exposure to knowledge, and the widening of horizons that results, is what education is all about. There is just one snag: the people at home have not gone through the same process. They have remained pretty much the same. They might even be somewhat threatened by the new you. Here are some tips for dealing with this situation:

• Expect the homecoming to be difficult – it may be a challenge to your still fragile new identity.
• Understand why both you and the people who stayed behind experience such intense emotions about the differences and distances that have entered your relationship. A handy tool to help you understand your feelings can be found in the work of Dr David Rock. Google the SCARF model, or watch him on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wu33SdjeCs
• Remind yourself that respect is about seeing people in their own unique light.
• Respect those who stayed behind by relating your adventures in an entertaining, non-threatening way.

Hopefully you will experience your family’s regard for you as unconditional – similar to the student who wrote this after going home:

The last time I went home I thought I was going home just to forget about school and just chill like other kids. The moment I got home I just sat the whole day, just looking at my house, just comparing it with the other houses around my home town. What really touched my heart was the moment I saw my mother. I just watched her and tears started rolling down my eyes. What amazed me was that every time she saw me she smiled. What I have now decided to do is get up and do my best because she believes in me.