I didn’t get it at first, the whole “hOUme” thing.

I remember walking to my room for the first time, seeing “hOUme” signs plastered onto the doors lining the hallway.

I mean yeah, I thought it was clever, but I didn’t think it was actually a thing.

College isn’t home, right?

I was so, so wrong.

Ohio University is every bit of home to me.

I’m not one for homesickness, but I imagined I would feel some sense of loneliness when my mom drove away my freshman year.

Sorry, Mom, but I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I shed a few tears upon her leaving, but the duration of my sadness was approximately 30 seconds to a minute.

I wasn’t homesick because I came home that day.

Correction -- I came hOUme that day (cue the emotional drama).

Having graduated with a class of less than 50 people, I was terrified to face the masses at OU.

I was going to be one person among thousands.

And thousands.

And thousands.

But it wasn’t at all how I thought it would be.

I fell in love with the simultaneous big and small atmosphere of OU.

I saw familiar faces every day.

The familiar faces evolved into the faces of some of my best friends.

I saw new faces, too.

I smiled at strangers because everyone just seems a little happier here.

I mean really, genuinely happy, because we Bobcats love our school.

We are the future moms and dads who drag our children to football games with green pom-poms and face paint.

We are the kids who are scolded by our parents for calling school “home.”

We yell “OU, oh yeah!” to anyone who questions our school apparel.

We’ve collected too many school T-shirts to count, and our wardrobes have never looked better.

We are the youth of America who actually like school.

We love paws and green and bands and bricks and anyone who loves any of the same things.

We’re happy people because we live in the coolest place on earth.

No matter where we come from, Athens is our hOUme.

The moment our feet hit the bricks, we became part of something so much bigger than ourselves; we became kin to the thousands before us who walked in the same steps.

We hate being told how these are the best years of our life, but they’ll go quickly.

We don’t want to lose the “right now” because we really, really like life as it is.

But the good news is that the best years have just started, because once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat.

And even when we’re old and wrinkled with Bobkittens of our own, we’ll always be part of a younger generation walking in our footsteps, in our very favorite place.

And that place is hOUme.