It’s been almost three weeks here at MU and everyone is starting to settle in. Schedules are becoming routine, people are finding their niches, and the first load of laundry is, hopefully, getting done. Regardless of how normalized your days are becoming, there is still the creeping nostalgia of more familiar times.

Homesickness is notoriously common for college students, especially in this first month. Everyone misses something or someone. Parents, significant others and, the real harbinger of tears, pets. But what is actually missed is not the people or animals associated with home. What people really miss is the feeling associated with home.

Home brings with it a natural sense of security. At home you have a routine, a time and a place for everything. Home life is a vast, inescapable doldrum of comforting normality. You never really have to worry about what will happen tomorrow while at home because it’s either already planned out, or someone else is in charge of making that decision for you.

At college, you have a choice. You don’t have to go to class, do your homework or even wake up before noon. You have choices, and this is a terrifying prospect. It’s the first time most kids are making their decisions without any aid or advice, and therefore the first time they are solely liable for the outcomes of these decisions. This daunting responsibility can cause quite a bit of stress.

For example, think of someone who never calls home. They say they hate their parents, they’re so excited to be away from home and they’re never going back. They may be experiencing reaction formation. This is when someone subconsciously transforms thoughts or emotions that they can’t handle into their opposites. In actuality, they may just really miss home. They might be dying to hear their parents’ voices again. They just don’t know how to deal with the fact that the independence they’ve craved since the awkward onset of puberty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

When someone wants to snuggle with the teddy bear they haven’t touched in years, eat the home-cooked meals they once dreaded or just get a hug from their mom, they are undergoing a process called regression. Regression is when someone reverts back to an earlier psychological stage because they can’t handle their current situation in a mature mindset. They yearn for simpler times when stress didn’t revolve around homework, social conflicts and crippling debt, but instead Little League, crushes and the ceremonial sprouting of your first armpit hair.

Homesickness is not necessarily about missing home. It’s about missing the sense of security that home provides and coming to terms with newfound independence. College is exciting. It’s the mark of adulthood and independence. Free from curfews and the totalitarian regime of parents, new students are excited to make their own choices, but few take into account what that really entails.