For the first 18 years of my life, I remained in a completely familiar environment and rarely left. I stayed in the same town with the associating people, doing the same routine every day, working in the same place for years and finally dwelling in the same house that all never seemed to change. I was living this boring, systematic lifestyle and I felt like I was passing me by every single day that I stayed there. I felt restricted to the place that I should feel most comfortable and most happy. It wasn’t until I left my corner of the world that I called home and started expanding my horizons and exploring the unknown world. How did I do that you ask? Well, the answer is simple, I left. I left home to venture off to a new adventure known as college.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s no place like home. That's where your humble beginnings came from and where everyone you know and love are. But if you’re a person like me, you need a change in routine and pace to keep life interesting. But I remember the excitement I felt before I started college. I remember leaving my job and saying goodbye to my friends and family. The anticipation of knowing there was a brand new life waiting for me to start it. Everyone knows that the main focus of college is to educate yourself so you can become somebody someday, so you can live comfortably and so on and so forth. Everyone also knows that you’ll be completely exposed to new experiences and a new lifestyle upon starting college whether you like it or not. But not everyone thinks of the strange double life they’ll soon be encountering. There’s now more than one place to call home. One home has your family and your buddies from high school. It’s the place you’re most familiar with and the life you have to go back to after a fun year away at school comes to an end. Your second home is your school, the home you got to choose. The place that you decided you would fit best for the next four to six years, where you made an entirely new family and where you put your best foot forward and show the world the best you could possibly be -- and you probably have much better memories here that you wouldn't even get close to getting back home.

Before you start college, you’re so wrapped up in the new things you’ll be doing and all of your expectations on how your first year at college will be, but you’ll never think of having to go back and forth from one home to another. When you come home, everything seems so different. When driving down the main road of your town you start to question things like "when did that store close?" or "how long has that been there?" You finally arrive home and it seems bigger than you remember it. Your dog is excited to see you, but may think of you as a stranger again. You start to realize that even when you're gone, life doesn't stop. Even though you're gone, your town will always be changing and there's always going to be something new being done while you're gone. On the other hand when you return to school, your room is just as you left it, your friends are still the same goofballs that you remember them to be and the food is still awful in the dining hall. If these two returns have one thing in common, it would be the excitement and enthusiasm of being back and picking up where you left off. It's the unconditional love you feel and receive from being surrounded by great people and being in a place you love at the same time. When you go away to college you learn to understand that there isn't one place that you can be without leaving, this is your life.

I still remember the ghost of my 18-year-old self -- waiting for my life to pick up and finally get out of that hum-drum life style. For the home that’s waiting for me to return for a while: leave all the lights on, I promise I’ll always find my way back.