My freshmen year of college, I, like many others in my class, struggled to find my stride.

We all struggled in different ways--some in athletics, some socially. Me? Muhlenberg just didn't feel like home, at least not yet. I never put much thought into why- in retrospect, it's likely because I had a “big ball of roots” attached to my foot, as Molly Caro May puts it.

If you haven't yet noticed, most people from Maryland really love Maryland. Crabs, Old Bay, the flag… I mean, if you go to a Bed, Bath, and Beyond in Maryland, you have the option of buying a quilt, decorative pillows, etc. all with the Maryland Flag pattern on them. My love of Old Bay seasoning didn't go away when I moved to Muhlenberg. If anything, it got stronger as the embodiment of my homesickness. I almost cried when I saw it at GQ, but I digress. What I'm trying to get at is that, before I moved to Pennsylvania, I had a place that felt like home, geographically, and that was in Maryland.

Cue my frantic efforts as a freshmen to reconcile this discord I felt--on one hand, my family and everything I loved was in Maryland. On the other hand, I had been told by countless people that my time at Muhlenberg would be the happiest four years of my life: that it felt like home to all of them. I didn't feel that way at all; was I doing something wrong? (Spoiler alert: no)

My most memorable of these efforts to find out how to make Muhlenberg a home came in a book that became my guide to freshmen year, despite the fact that that I was absolutely nowhere close to the intended audience of the book.

I picked up the book at a stop during a road trip, found in the “nature” section of Barnes and Noble or thereabouts. I was looking for gardening and found this instead. I totally judged a book by its cover: this had an appealing cover, and the font of the title is the same font used in documentaries, including one about a guy who builds his own tiny house as an attempt to find a sense of home. The subtitle is a direct reflection of this--"One Woman's Search for Place," it boasts. I was sold.

The book? The Map of Enough, by Molly Caro May. Within the first few pages, I was hooked. The language was gorgeous, with strong sensory cues evoking beautiful images. It was wonderful. I would have loved it, probably, even if I wasn't looking for a guide on how to make a place feel like home. And talk about home it did.

The book itself is a memoir of Molly Caro May’s experience in dropping everything and moving to Montana with her fiancé to build a yurt and to try to find a sense of home. My story couldn't be more different than May's--she had spent her whole life traveling. When asked where she was from would respond with “nowhere, really,” and had built her sense of self around this identity of not having a home.

A yurt, a traditional temporary Mongolian dwelling, was the perfect solution for her. A home without a need for a geographic location. So, she and her fiancé built it together- an arduous project that the first part of the memoir is devoted to. They move into the yurt just as the Montana winter rolls around; learning how to adjust to the lifestyle is the focus of the second part of the memoir. The third part is how, once acclimated to the lifestyle, May finds herself a home. That’s all I’ll say about the plot-line, really, since if you’re inspired to read this after viewing this article, I don’t want to spoil anything. It is definitely worth the read.

So, why did this resonate so deeply with me? Like I said, I had a home, a place that I was attached to. I clearly wasn’t building my dorm room (structurally, at least). Allentown, PA doesn’t have the extreme seasons that Montana is known for. I never went face-to-face with a mountain lion. Really, May’s experience in Montana was not even remotely close to what I was experiencing in Pennsylvania.

But there was one striking similarity between us--we were both examining what, exactly, home meant to us. And in the end, our definitions of home differed.

I found myself growing to love Muhlenberg, though I’ll admit I’ve never really called it home (even as I start my third year). I love it, and it holds so many memories for me, but home for me is still in Maryland. I even tease my mom about this--when I’m in Maryland, she’ll ask what time I’m planning on leaving to go home. I always call her out on it--I guess it’s weird that I still haven’t adjusted to it as a home, even though those around me have started to consider it home. While my freshman brain would be riddled with anxiety about this, I’m now significantly more relaxed about the discord that still exists.

I have a home in Maryland, and I have an apartment in Pennsylvania. And hey, who knows, maybe this will be the year that I start calling Muhlenberg home; I’ll just have to see what the future holds.

To all my friends, to the freshmen I’ve advised, to the kids wandering around the New Sci building wondering what they got themselves into: Muhlenberg might feel like home, and it might not, but either way your experience is valid. And, if you want a good story about a woman who is looking for the definition of home, I couldn’t sing the praises of The Map of Enough more if I tried. It’s wonderfully written, I’ve definitely used it in multiple school assignments, and I will always now, when stressed about an upcoming test, say “well if I fail this, at least I can drop out of school, move to Montana, and live in a yurt.” You can too.