Today is the beginning of fall break for students at Ohio State, and it's my first time being home since move-in day. I know 7 ½ weeks doesn't seem like that long, but it's definitely the longest I've ever been away from home. I was psyched to come back, but not quite sure what to expect. Now sitting on my own bed in a bedroom that has carpet and A/C instead of broken tile and an industrial fan from Costco, I've made a few observations.
Talking with my parents felt like a breath of fresh air
I've seen my parents multiple times since the start of school, and we keep up communication almost every day, which is why it was surprising to me how great it felt just to sit on the couch in our family room and have a conversation with them. It felt like my brain was overflowing with all this stuff I wanted to tell them, and I think it was the familiarity of sitting in the same living room I've sat in for the past 18 years that made everything feel so easy and comfortable again.Seeing my room key felt out of place
At one point during the aforementioned conversation with my parents in the family room, I looked down to see my room key in one hand, my lanyard wrapped around my fingers. I've seen this key and this lanyard in my hand countless times every day for the past two months, but seeing them while sitting on my couch, rather than my dorm room desk chair or a bench on The Oval, felt like a glitch in the system.
Texting my college friends while sitting in my childhood bedroom was an intense case of worlds colliding
Before I moved to college, every memory I'd had of texting friends from my bed had been organizing plans for homecoming or scheduling a trip to the mall with my best friends from high school. Tonight, texting the girls on my floor, who, before this moment, I had only ever communicated with on campus, had me beyond shook. It felt like I had somehow time-traveled and I was back in high school, seeing a vision of my future college friends playing out on my phone screen.
If I want to get food at midnight I have to be careful not to wake my parents
I got extremely used to being out and about in the middle of the night at college; my tendency to start film projects the day before they were due led to lots of late-night editing sessions in Hopkins Hall, which were usually accompanied by late-night trips to Blaze or UDF. After dinner tonight, I was contemplating whether I'd want to get some ice cream in a few hours- then realized that in order to do that, I'd have to resort to my old high school ways of slowly creeping down the stairs and tiptoeing across the kitchen floor so as not to disturb my parents asleep upstairs.
My bedroom is so...quiet
Anyone who lives in a residence hall knows it's never completely silent- from doors slamming shut in the hallway to random people blasting music outside, from the weird sounds coming from your fridge to the weird sounds coming from your radiator, there is never a dull moment for your ears. But I never realized quite how noisy it was in my dorm room until I was in my bedroom at home again. No slamming, no blasting, no weird sounds. It was just really, really, really quiet (not that I'm complaining).
So even though it's weird to be home again, I am truly so, so happy to be back. As much as I love college, and as excited as I am to go back, there's just something about sitting in my family room having long conversations with my parents that I know I'll never be able to experience anywhere but right here.
