As many college students do, aside from those who are too far away to travel for that short of a period, I went home for Thanksgiving break. Differently from my first year at college, this trip, along with the other breaks I’m sure I will spend at home, didn’t give me same feelings of excitement that I once used to get returning to my hometown after months of being away at college.
Throughout the break I also found myself referring to my school town and residence as “home.” “When I get home after break, I have to do laundry” or “My roommates and I are planning on going ice skating when we all get home.” I’m not quite sure when or why I started thinking of school as my home, but I did. It then got very confusing for me, because certainly the place I had spent 18 years of my life at cannot be regarded as not my home either. I’m sure many college students experience this same internal conflict.
Freshman year, the memory of living life 24/7 in your home town is still very fresh. You’re eager to keep all of your friends at home updated on all the little details of your college life and vice versa. You anticipate the breaks home so that you can rekindle the super awesome friendships you maintained all throughout your primary and secondary education, Thanksgiving break in particular, being that for many it is the first time you’ll be home all semester. So you can imagine my surprise that as this break approached the second time around, I was nowhere near as enthused as I was a year ago. If anything I was a little bummed that I was going to be leaving my friends at school, the ones I now spend every waking minute with.
Don’t get me wrong, I was so excited to see my family, and my dog, and my friends from home, the number of which has certainly shrunk over the course of the past year. However, in a sense, they were all the connection I had left to my hometown. I had no desire to return to my high school, or any other local places that one held so much importance to me. All the ties I once held so dearly, the ones I swore I’d never forget or get sick of, have started to fade away. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It takes some time at college before you settle in and really find your place, but once you do, it’s as though nothing outside of it matters. Just like when you were young and you swore the café in town had the best coffee and the park near your house would always be your favorite spot to run. Things change.
College done successfully means you’ve created a life away from home you enjoy so much, it starts to become your new home. There’s no need to feel guilty about calling school home. You’re family mostly likely won’t take offense to this; they know you love them. They want you to be happy and successful, no matter where you go. You may call a hundred different places “home” throughout your life, but you’ll always know where your home is.
