For the first 18 years of our lives, we all, for the most part, stay in the same place. We live in the same house, go to the same school and spend time with, essentially, the same people. And then, one day out of the blue, we up and move 400 miles away to live in a box-sized room with a stranger at a school we’ve never attended to be surrounded by people we do not know.

And all of a sudden, we have No. Idea. What. The F***. We are doing.

Because the only life that we have ever known has been left behind.

But after not very long at all, we discover that this new life isn’t so bad after all. Actually, it just may be one of the best experiences of our lives.

For me, one of the strangest parts about college was leaving home and starting a new life. I didn’t think that I was ready to leave my family and friends, my home and everything that I knew. What I didn’t realize was that going away to college is not leaving the life you know, it’s starting a second one.

Once you start getting settled in and comfortable, college doesn’t feel so foreign; it starts to feel normal. The people you meet and start spending time with. The walk to class, your new “usual” at Starbucks, the little quirks on campus that all become expected. Your dorm room will start to feel like home, and the people in it become your family. And for a while, that life back home seems like another world.

And then one day, you go home again.

And this feels very odd. Because now, there are two places that are your comfort zones.

That first trip home after being away for a while is a good one. You get to see all of the important people and go to all the important places and eat all the important food that mattered in your first life. In many ways, it is happy and comfortable and feels like returning from a really long vacation. But in other ways, the thought of going back to school is just as comforting. It is the life that you have adapted to, the one that you have grown to love in the absence of the life you have always known.

I have learned a lot of things in my first seven months of college. However, I think the most important lesson that I have learned is that there is never too much room in your heart for the people and things that make you happy. Becoming part of a new team, or friend group, or starting new activities do not invalidate the ones that came before—they simply add to the joys in your life. When I think of “home,” I usually think of home on Long Island. I think of my family and my friends, my pizza and my beaches. But thinking of school as home doesn’t feel so weird either. School is my new home, with my new family and friends and sub-par pizza and no beaches in sight. I love having these two distinct lives and knowing that no matter where I go, I can always return to one of them as my home.