Finals Week & Homesickness

Last week was crazy in a not-so-fun way. I had three major finals and a lot emotional “trauma” [yes, I’m exaggerating, but still] to deal with. The finals were awesome – I got my As and I’m glad. However, my Spanish treacher-er did screw me over – he gave me a B for my 89.53%. Everyone rounds up you fool, why don’t you? Life.

But what really made this week crazy was the homesickness. Way back in summer, I was this young man, confident of being in control of my emotions and ready to belittle the homesickness theories. I cognitively dissociated myself to believe that there was no need for me to return to Dubai this winter for I was this strong fellow who had a ton of related people in the US of A, and who thought that visiting them, instead of going back home, made way more sense. After all, spending ten pocketfuls of money and going down to Dubai for 20 days didn’t make any darn sense, right? Wrong! It makes all the friggin’ sense that it needs to, and yearns for far more attention than I have ever given it. I should have gone back home. I really should have.

It hit me when I saw all of the gazillion people that I know in universities all over the world facebook their excitement of heading back home. Pictures and videos of school and Dubai did not help either. The typical-ness of Mum and Dad made me more nostalgic than ever. The thought of enticing Ghar-Ka-Khana [home food] was agonizing. Ali, the fool that he is, was not helping either. One day before my Philosophy exam, these thoughts rattled my emotions. I stopped studying, got on Expedia.com and started looking for the cheapest possible flights to Dubai. How I searched! I called Mum and told her I wanted to come home, giving her vivid details of how the air-ticket was relatively cheap and how it could all be possible.

Oh, it’s not possible! I was in this emotional delirium which made the ridiculous seem reasonable, and that dragged me into thoughts that my Psychology professors Sam Gosling and James Pennebaker would be proud of. Emotions offer stir up such extreme thoughts and actions. However principled and “in-control” you are, the passion of true emotion can sometimes drive you to do things that you know are in no way reasonable or right. Obviously, this doesn’t solely apply to homesickness. Temptation to do the pleasurable wrong, whence engulfed in an emotional trance – that’s a broader description. It is closely related to “cognitive dissonance” [this wacky term that I learnt in my awesome Psychology class]. Cognitive dissonance occurs when you have two contradictory thoughts, which drives you to choose one and justify it. Didn’t get it? It’s a little complicated – e-mail me if you really want to know. =)

I am better now. The homesickness has subsided but I am afraid that it has only become dormant. I am dealing with it right now, but I will not deal with it next winter because I am so going back home then! At least that’s what I’m saying now. We’ll see how cognitively dissociated I will get then.

P.S. Apologies to those that got bored/annoyed by my usage of certain not-found-in-Wikipedia terms [i.e. Cognitive Dissonance =)].