The journey back home is perilous, beautiful, long-anticipated, and never quite the same as it was last time you took that plane, train or automobile.

The Epic Journey:

Coming home has tested college students tirelessly. The feats of strength begins, first with an immersion into the flood of the holiday season.

The first threshold:

How much home made food can you handle?

Grandma's cookies anyone?

Of course, there's always that local spot that you just have to go back too. Only if you're lucky, that local spot won't be a chain restaurant. Delawareans know all too well about these struggles.

The second threshold:

The never-ending onslaught of questions.

"How is school?"

"Wait, what are you studying again?"

"Oh, and what do you want to do with that?"

"What was that friend's name again?"

A fork in the road:

It's at this stage in the journey where old friends begin to resurface. New experiences start to unfold, and new paths are opened.

There are a lot of different reactions. Old faces take on new roles and relationships in your life.

The friends you see once a year, this time every year:

The friends that you can go months without talking too and still know their entire life story:

The friends who you are drifting apart from:

The friends who you want to spend time with but aren't home or are too busy:

The friends who you never thought you would be close with:

The journey home is full of trials and tribulation. But it is also rife with exploration and introspection. These two experiences allow for that weird experience of "free time." These are those fruitful moments of winter break, where the college-aged pilgrim journeys into their own personal abyss and has time to think, to question or to doubt. In these moments, the winter break transforms into a review of how school is actually going. Winter Break creates this sacred refuge for solitude. In this solitude those "eureka" moments surface.

Without the demands of school and in the context of a familiar and hopefully welcoming home environment, the learning doesn't stop. Education during winter break changes into an intimately personal lesson on what matters most in your life. These down days provide a mirror. Seeing your life as you think you left it, coupled with the return back into this life as a person who has had new experiences and who has had the chance to succeed, fail, and grow -- winter break is the culmination of a semester away at college.The is only one grade, one exam. This exam only has one question. And you have the privilege of grading your own answer.

What is my next step forward on this journey?