It’s officially the most depressing time of year.

No, I’m not talking about the day after Christmas, where you look around at all the decorations you put up and realize that you have to take them down now because Christmas is (sadly) only once a year, and Santa can’t take your decorations with him when he goes back up the chimney. Moreover, I’m not reminding you of the gloomy day when you leave your favorite summer/spring getaway after a week or so of unwinding only to spend hours in a plane or car. Believe it or not, there’s a time more miserable and unbearable than these – back to school.

Whether you’re in kindergarten or graduate school, this time of year is never easy. First of all, I think we all know that those back to school ads are a lie; no one is that happy packing their back pack with notebooks that will soon be filled with thousands of words that you will have to have engraved in your brain in order to pass a class. And I mean, I guess tax-free weekend is fantastic with saving a whole $5 and all, but it doesn’t make up for having to go through yet another school year, especially if you don’t enjoy your school. I personally love my school (shout out to Missouri State University), but that doesn’t make it easy to go back. With college in particular, it is an extremely tiring 9 months to trek through — and I'm not just talking about the school work.

If I learned anything from my first year of college, it’s that there’s a lot of going back and forth between school and home. I wasn’t one of those students who went home every other weekend, considering that I live three hours away from my school and don’t have a car there with me; however, that didn’t stop me from coming home often. I came to realize that weekends home went too fast, and that while it was worth it to spend a day home, it became exhausting and almost saddening. After all, the life I've come to known and have spent years building is at my home. Being away from home for so long becomes hard, and sometimes all you want is to curl up in your own bed in your own room with your family just a few rooms away.

Being home for the summer has been refreshing, but realizing that I have to go through the same battle between home and school this year makes me feel homesick weeks before I even leave. Additionally, there’s the typical nerves setting in that I have to once again leave my family, friends, boyfriend, home, and cat behind. With that comes the fear of drifting apart from home friends and becoming extremely homesick without being able to come home. You know, though, part of me knows that these are normal feelings, and that it will be okay.

Once you get settled in, reunite with friends (or make new friends), join clubs, and dive in to your school work, you will realize that everything is going to be fine and, if anything, you will gain more life experience from your end of summer freak out. Going back to college is undoubtedly difficult, but it’s not the end of the world.