As finals week has come to a close and we all packed up our bags to head back to the place we call home for the holidays, I have realized that a person can have more than one place to call home. I never thought this would happen, but my dorm hallway, yes my smelly dorm hallway, has become my second home. I live over one thousand miles away, which means I don’t have the luxury of going home every weekend like most of my friends. I have been there when everything happened, every weekend, every great gossip story on Sunday morning. My dorm hall had not only become some of my best friends but a wonderful family too.

It is important that in college you feel you have a “home away from home”, we all need a support group to get us through these tough months of being away from home for the first time. I mean, it isn’t like you have your mom right next to you while you continually panic over every test and research paper you will write. Your “dorm-mates” will, though. They have seen it all from me, joy, worry, excitement, sadness, and even annoyed, and I have seen all these emotions from everyone else. We had each other’s backs each day as we endured the next week’s drama and frustrations.

Everyone in the hall has a family role. We have a mom friend who no matter how hard she hides it, she is always making sure we get back to our rooms safely and if we ever need someone to talk to she is there. Then we have all the brothers running around acting like typical boys down the hallways, the sisters who love to gossip, and heck even a creepy uncle can pop in. Oh, and there are always the cousins, the ones you never really talk to but you know that if you needed them to help you with anything they would be there in a heartbeat.

I realized when I took off and left the beautiful city of Pittsburgh how much I was really going to miss my college family. This semester they have been there when I needed people in my life. Coming to college I felt more alone than I ever had, but today I can say that I have a family. The last day when everyone was about to depart, all the hugs I gave and received were crazy. It wasn’t until that day I realized we had grown to be this beautiful, hot mess of a family. These are my people, my tribe, through thick and thin, and I cannot wait to spend another semester with them at home.