It's the first day at school. Dad unloads the family car, Mom arranges the dorm room, and then, amid a flurry of hugs and kisses, they depart, leaving the weepy new student behind. That day is the toughest; after a few days of homesickness, freshmen bounce back. Or so we believe. Not so, maintains Joshua Gold, Ph.D., an assistant professor in counselor education at the University of South Carolina. In fact, students can experience profound grief well into the first semester of college.
Too often, though, that grief goes unrecognized and unvalidated; it is "disenfranchised," in Gold's term. "Societally, we tend to look at changes from the most optimistic perspective," he notes. Though freshmen are saying good-bye to childhood, leaving home, and going to an intimidating new place, they aren't supposed to feel anything but happiness and excitement about it.
