I never really understood until this past year what the word home really meant.

To me, I always considered home the small town I had grown up in. Home was attending school each day with the same 150 or so students in my grade. Home was going to the same restaurants each weekend with my family, hanging out with the same friends, eating the same ice cream flavor at everyone’s favorite ice cream shop. Doing the same things over and over again and being surrounded by the same people for 18 years made it so easy to identify this place as home.

Truth is, I had never been exposed to anything different. Somehow, it seemed like so many of us were almost, if not, the same. A good amount of us came from the same types of backgrounds. Our friends shared the same interests, our families held the same beliefs. Even though we weren’t completely the same, as no one is the exact same, it felt like we were pretty close to it. These familiarities were really the only thing I had ever known, so it just became natural that being similar to everyone around me was “normal”.

Then, everything changed. I went to college.

College was a lot different than home. I was always taught that college is a place where people of all different backgrounds come together in hope of gaining not just an education, but brand new experiences as well. Once encountering people that were so similar to me, I was told that I would soon swim in a pool filled with all different types of people. Our thoughts, opinions, feelings, and beliefs would be completely different. We would be completely different.

During my first semester of my freshman year of college, I came to realize that I once again lived in a community that so many people considered home. They too shared the same interests as one another, held the same beliefs, and were very similar.

The only difference was that, this time, I was the one that differed from others.

For a while, I had a very difficult time adjusting to this new lifestyle. People did not understand my opinions or beliefs; the customs I had always known and grew up with made absolutely no sense to them. From this, I would come to learn that college may not always be such a welcoming environment. I found out that ideas, opinions, and beliefs aren’t always easily accepted in the college community. The way I had grown up was different from a lot of other people, and that was okay with me. I was eager and willing to teach people about my niche and understand theirs; they were not. Confusion about my differing lifestyle did not fascinate people, but instead turned into hurtful invective pointed my way. From the painful comments about my religious beliefs to the repetitive questions asking if I was upset that I was different from a lot of other students, I finally understood that being similar to everyone around me wasn’t “normal”.

To me, home will always be a place where I am similar to a lot of people; but, we shouldn’t choose to live at home forever. There comes a time when we must choose to depart, and embark on the unknown. From being in a community for so long where I was so similar to other people to being in a community where I was different from everyone else, I realized how important it is to be accepting of others and exploring their differences.

We shouldn’t succumb to surrounding ourselves with people that are, if not, almost the exact same as us. We should strive to put ourselves in diverse settings where everyone holds different opinions, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. We should be willing to learn about these differences, and in return, share our own as well.