If you had asked me 5 years ago if I’d be living in a completely new city, away from everyone and everything I’ve ever known, I would have laughed at the thought. For someone who’s moved all over the GTA, I’m familiar with the moving process (more than I’d like to admit). What I wasn’t familiar with was moving to a completely new city, four hours away from where I’d lived for 22 years of my life. So many law students move cities to attend law school, and many, like me, have little to no experience living in the city that their school is in.

When I got accepted to Windsor Law, all I could think about was how scary moving 4 hours away would be. How would I survive one of the most stressful years of my life without the support network I had built for myself in the GTA? How would I stay connected to my family and friends back home? Would long distance work, or was my relationship doomed? Would I make new friends in Windsor or would I be all alone, wishing that I could be back home with my family?

These questions continued to run through my mind up until about the first week of being in Windsor. The adjustment was definitely difficult, but I started to learn how to manage, and I started answering these questions one at a time. I’m almost done 1L now, and I can say with certainty that I’ve been surviving in Windsor without my support system being physically close to me. The really nice thing about living in the age of technology is being able to access my support network regardless of me being 4 hours away. This leads to my answer for the second question: I rely on technology to stay connected to everyone back home. As for long distance, it is hard at times, but with communication and effort, my relationship is now stronger than it was before I moved to Windsor. The last question is one that I still struggle with to this day, and it is the only one that I haven’t fully answered. Making friends and creating a good network in Windsor has been tough for me, but the few people that I have gotten close to have made me feel like I’m not alone. While there are times when I feel lonely, I know that I’m not alone. In addition to that, while I do wish I could be with my family and friends, it’s also nice being able to focus on school without distractions.

Keeping my mental health in a good place throughout this adjustment was one of the more difficult things to manage. While social media can be a great way to stay connected, it can also cause this sense of feeling of being left out. I found myself deleting my social media every now and then to stop this negative feeling, but then I realized that keeping up with my network back home became more difficult as a result. So, how was I supposed to stay connected to my network without social media? If I were to keep my social media then I would be allowing myself to spiral, but if I were to get rid of it temporarily, then I would also lose connection with my network.

Here are some of the ways that I stayed connected while not actively relying on social media:

Facetime:

Facetime or Facebook video calling has been one of the main ways that I have stayed in contact with my friends and family back home. There’s no need to have the Facebook app on my phone, you only need Facebook messenger, so there’s no reliance on social media there. Facetime is completely separate as well, so again, I’m able to stay in contact without looking on Instagram to see what my friends and family are up to. It is also a lot nicer to have conversations with my network than just checking on their social media (at least in my opinion).

Scener:

One of the biggest things I loved doing back home was watching whichever show I was into at the time with my friends or family at the end of a long day. Scener is a Google Chrome extension that can connect to a range of streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, to name a few. I can watch a show with anyone that has the extension and actively see and hear them while watching the show; while it’s not the exact same as being in person, it’s a pretty great alternative.

Tiktok:

While I know that Tiktok is technically considered social media, I don’t find that I am left with the feeling of being left out. Most of the time, my FYP is full of people I either follow or people I don’t know, and I don’t usually see any of my network on there either. Sending funny or relatable Tiktoks to my network is also a fun way for me to stay connected with them. While it is the least used of these three alternatives, it’s still a fairly decent alternative to other social media platforms in my person experience.

I know that it can seem like it’s easy to be disconnected when moving away for law school, but there are so many ways, in addition to those that I listed, that can really help you stay connected. If I have learned anything throughout my first year of law school, it’s that even when I am physically disconnected from my network, I can still stay mentally connected to them — no matter where I am!