It’s that time of year again; the time of year college students look forward to. It’s the holiday season. With Thanksgiving upon us and Christmas right around the corner, students are glad for the break to go home and relax from the stress of upcoming finals and papers. Going home means good food, seeing old friends, sleeping in your own bed and be able to take a shower without the need for shower shoes.
There are drawbacks to going home for the holidays for the first time. Family members will bombard the student with questions about their classes, friends, love life, and overall adjustment to college; this will all be done over the dinner table, so students should try to eat as quickly as possible to enjoy the actual meal then prepare themselves for the onslaught of questions.
In spite of this, going home for Thanksgiving break for the first time should feel like it’s the greatest thing in the world. As a first year student, the chances to see friends from high school is a highly coveted experience, as are the chances to see all your family members at once. Being around friends and family is great, but it is during this break that first year students will come to realize that “home” is no longer home.
The students will miss their friends at college, and long to see them during the break but are often separated by states. They will then spend most of break wishing they were together and want break to be over just to get back to Washington College to see them. In fact, the majority of Thanksgiving break will be spent wanting to return to college, missing the environment, friends, your roommate and the campus/ town.
Thanksgiving break is the time when students realize that their college has become their home, more so than their actual home has. Spending months around their friend group, living with a roommate and being away from home causes the student to become accustomed to their college campus life.
When choosing a college to attend, an important factor to consider is how the student feels on campus, and if the student could call the campus “home.” Once the student has picked the college to call “home,” that college will actually become home to student. In conversation with friends and family members, students will find themselves referring to their college as “home” even though they are technically sitting in their home. There will be accidental slips of “when I go home”, referring to returning to college at the end of Thanksgiving break. Family members will just look and laugh, happy that the student has adapted to their college setting and feels at home there.
Their college campus has become the home of many students, replacing the old “home.” This is a good thing, since the students will be spending the next four or so years of their lives at that college, and feeling at home makes the transition easier. The “home” of the students will always be home, but now they just have another home. Students will finish Thanksgiving break and go back to college, only to repeat the cycle when Christmas break comes. But now the student will not be surprised by the revelation anymore. After all, there is nothing wrong with having two homes.
