The astute institution of the internet defines home as the following: “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” And while this is a stunning observation that requires the most basic of analysis of human behavior...and as is the case with most research, it doesn’t apply to college students.

So here’s the thing, most college students, especially freshmen, have a home that they left behind to attend college. However, when you’re at college, you cultivate something similar to what you left behind, which complicates things. In your hometown, you had your school, your friends and family, maybe a job, and of course, your house. Now, which of those things cross over with college?

All of them.

Perhaps the house thing is a stretch, but I know a good deal of people who do live in houses off-campus. I, in fact, have just signed a lease to live in a house next academic year. (That’s scary; adulting). I also have heard “house” used to refer to someone’s dorm room.

“I didn’t clean my house today and I think that’s a reflection of my mental state.”

A house is a dwelling. But is it synonymous with home? A dwelling is easy. I’ve got the dwelling thing covered with a dorm room that’s decorated to the nines (but also currently has a mess to the tens…) What I’ve come to recognize “home” as is made of the several components I listed above. School/work, friends and family, and yes, a dwelling.

In college, you get into a routine. However, dealing with the holidays things get...complicated.

My immediate family followed a rule of two (five if you include three cats), so by senior year of high school, family for me always included my close friends because they were people I could rely and confide on; people I wanted to build community and aspirations with.

Moving to college did in no way cause me to “lose” any of that, but has made it incredibly difficult to maintain every bond I had spent the past seven years cultivating. The chance to rebuild and reconnect these connections over the winter holiday break is incredibly enticing. But, then I remember that I’m going to a different home for the holidays. Not the one where I built family through the tears and sweat of adolescence, but the family that I love because I was born to love them.

Let me be clear, I truly do love my family in rural midwestern Ohio, but for a queer person of color who is an aspiring entertainment content maker… the creative stimulation can be a little lacking.

However, when I think of the possibilities of projects I could create in either the suburban beach town I called home before or the bustling entertainment capital I call home now, the need to go home home frighteningly dwindles. And it’s not all work, I also think about the friends from suburban San Diego that I won’t be able to see as a result of my time spent in the midwest for the holidays. I’ll get snowflakes, sure—that is, if global warming allows it.

I think the problem I’m suffering from is having too many “homes.” I have people I love in three places, scattered across the country. The candor is that my professional opportunities exist in only one, the newest of the three.

To fall in love so quickly with a new entity can be dangerous. I’ve seen this happen too much already this semester, but, I love Los Angeles. I love the people here, gathered from all across the world; I love the culture cultivated from a melting pot of ideas and experiences; I love the opportunities that warping by at lightspeed and I want to take advantage of them.

They say, if you don’t go home your freshman summer, you’ll never go home again. They say you shouldn’t worry about internships and the “real world” yet, but honestly as someone who wants to work in a medium that’s constantly changing and evolving—I can’t wait to get out there.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain. At least, I have the opportunity to go home. Some of my closest friends are from Vietnam and South Africa—they don’t get to go home for the holiday season. I should feel lucky that I’ll be getting a buckeye snowfall.

I love going home, and I’m excited for the holiday season, but I’ll be just as happy to come back to this home too; even if my “house” is just a little bigger than a twin bed.