Many of us have heard that Phillip Phillips song, "Home," that hit the charts in the Spring 2012, instantly becoming a hit sensation that swept the nation by storm. The chorus, perhaps the more familiar part of tune, ends with the lyrics "I'm going to make this place your home." I'm sure some of you reading this have applied those lyrics to your own hometown, knowing that it's where your roots are. You've made that place your home for a number of years. What about as you've grown up and moved on from that "hometown" mindset? For college students, these are lyrics that should be taken to heart. These are lyrics that I have taken to heart,so should you.

You see, although you have an actual home, a roof, and family to go back to on breaks, home exists right within the place that you will be spending the next four years (hopefully no more) of your life. It's your dorm, it's the people you get involved with in the activities you do, and it includes the city your school calls "home."

You see, this has come true for me and my college career. Mom and dad, I'm sorry -- but not sorry. The place I call college is also the place I call home. For all of you college students or even future college students, there is almost a need to create it home. You invest four valuable years of your life into this place, why not make the best of it and "make yourself at home" while you're there. Odds are, if you don't make it even a little part of home, there's no chance you'll survive. Your life while at college will be practically miserable.

I speak about this from experience. I'm privileged to attend a university where the school plays a key role in the city and where the city plays a key role in the school. The community and atmosphere that comes with this college town compares to no other. It's an area with a culture so unique you dive into it from curiosity -- a city with so many opportunities to get plugged in with or involved with something. The list of things you're able to get involved in is endless. In a good way, you almost have no other choice but to call it home.

This place is where I have made one of the bigger niches of my life. This is the place I invest time and make new memories with the friends that I consider dear to my heart -- not friends, but family.

This is the place where I finally get the opportunity to venture out on my own and become the adult that I've been raised up to be. This is the place that gives me many solid tools to create, form, and shape the person I want to be when I eventually finish and move on to the next stage of adulthood. This place will eventually make me who I will be.

I'm thankful for my college town. It's a place that I have been able to begin to call home. This city will be somewhere that I will have little trouble making myself home in the remaining years of my schooling. I'm thankful to live somewhere with people that make the effort to make its "temporary residents" feel warmed and welcome, leaving us students feeling just that. I'm glad I've made this place my "home."