Traveling: An Emotional Rollercoaster

Photo by Sydney Meyer

The yearn to travel tugs at us all. The urge to see the world passes through our dreams at least once -- for some it is stronger than for others.

Traveling brings us great joy as we explore the unknown. Seeing new sites and meeting new people is one of the intrinsic reasons behind purposely leaving home. Most students at Ottawa University have traveled from several states away to come to school in Kansas.

Being away from home causes a wide range of feelings, some of excitement, some of anxiety and stress. Traveling alone can be full of pleasure and pressure; emotions range between the ecstasies of checking destinations off a bucket list to the mind-taxing effort of stalling in traffic or airport security.

The Campus sat down with Brock Caffee, licensed clinical marriage and family therapist (LCMFT) and interim counselor on campus at Ottawa University, to discuss the psychological aspects of traveling away from home.

Caffee likens the emotional challenges of students leaving home to the experience of grief.

“It involves a big life change so some of the feelings are anxiety and sadness; those are very normal things to expect,” he says.   

For some students, coming to Ottawa University is their first time being away from home for an extended period of time. Such is the case with Jared Freedman, who is in his first semester as a freshman at Ottawa.

Freedman traveled to Kansas from Snohomish, Washington. He experienced a state of culture shock upon comparing the small size of his new Kansas locale to his hometown.

Excitement and loneliness are some of the emotions Freedman describes as he talks about his initial semester at Ottawa University, saying, “It’s like a little adventure.”

Freedman downplays ideas of feeling stressed over the long distance he faces between Washington and Kansas, though he does admit to a fear of flying.

“I don’t know if the word would be stressed -- it’d be more about, like, displacement. It’s like feeling that I don’t belong here and feeling that I’m not in the right place,” Freedman says. “I just feel like Kansas is a good place for me, but when I think about my whole life and where I’m supposed to be I feel like it’s still going to be back home.”

Freedman sums it up, “I think traveling is fun, I think you’re not living life until you travel. There is too much in the world that people don’t see; it’s kind of the reason I came to Kansas.”

Throughout their college career, all students struggle at times with being away from home in one way or another. Caffee advocates for students to take care of themselves while adapting to change.

“Give yourself time to adjust. Rest. Something that doesn’t happen a lot when people are anxious or in a new place is that they don’t sleep enough,”  Caffee says. “Don’t forget to talk to other people or reach out to the counseling center. This is an important resource if you’re dealing with being away from home.”