Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which for a lot of us means heading home. For most, it will be a nice comfort to be back home after a few months at school. But while it’s nice to have a break, being home comes with its own set of difficulties and stress.
Four months is a pretty long time, and in college it might as well be a year because people change so much. We’ve had four months to pick up new eating habits, new hobbies, and new beliefs. Not to mention the foul mouth you might pick up from hanging out with a new group of friends. But even if you come home with a new haircut, a nose ring and a vow to vegetarianism, your parents are going to expect you to eat two helpings of turkey.
Our immediate family watches us grow and change for over a decade, and then they release us out into the wild. When we come back months later with dirty laundry and empty stomachs, they still see the kid they raised for 18 years.
Last year I had started working out and was proud of the progress I had made, but I was still the wimpy, awkward little sister of the family. You have to be ready to hear the same jokes you heard throughout adolescence. Your mom might cut your food up for you, or your dad might bake an extra pie just because he "knows" you’re going to eat one all by yourself. There’s no escaping who you used to be when you go home. It’s a great lesson in accepting who you were and who you are. It’s also a great reminder of why you moved away.
Speaking of reminders, remember that dramatic thing that happened between you and one of your friends back in sophomore year of high school? Get ready to revisit that.
Not everybody plans on seeing their high school friends when they go home, but they probably will. And for some reason, instead of talking about all of the wonderful new things in your lives (literally four months worth), you’ll end up discussing something that happened a year ago.
When I went home for Thanksgiving, and then later for Christmas, my freshman year of college, I had a mantra: “It won’t be exactly as it used to be.” That mantra turned out to be very accurate, and yet some things never change. Those two friends will always be a little sour toward each other because of the Prom Incident of 2013, and that’s something you’ll just have to be aware of. But if you’d rather not deal with that drama all over again, I would recommend recruiting a few other friends who will help distract them from each other.
For some people, Thanksgiving will be interesting because ‘going home’ won’t be going home for them. If you’re the last kid out of the house, like I was, your parents may have moved. Their new house might still be in your hometown, but it won’t be home to you.
It’s weird not having a room that is yours, but it’s not as weird as you might think. It’s kind of cool to realize that your new home is that tiny shared bedroom back on campus that looks like a very well decorated prison cell. And it might feel better for New-And-Improved-You to not have to sleep in Senior-Year-Of-High-School-You’s bedroom.
Going home is really exciting and usually pretty nice, but it’s really cool to know as you’re leaving your parent’s house that you’re going home again.
