Home vs Home

People preach to first-semester college freshmen about the shock of living alone for the first time, but they never talk about going back home, or what it’s like to return for the second semester. 

I have to admit, my first semester in college taught me a lot. I was on my own for the first time, and not just out of the house, but out of the state, a terribly long way from home. I learned how to navigate the airport on my own, and deciphered public transportation once I arrived. I learned how to cut someone else’s hair, dye my own, and that it often takes more than one bottle of bleach. I lived in the same room as someone other than my sister for the first time and managed, remarkably, to always be on time (you don’t want to know how many alarms are on my phone). 

I’ve always been a homebody, but I found myself, for the first time in my life, hanging with my friends around the clock, and that changed a lot about me. I learned how to live by myself, with myself, and it was an immense change in the way I ran my life. 

Going home to sunny Florida was a shock to the system, in more ways than one. For starters, 70-degree weather was a wonderful change from the cold I had grown accustomed to. It was strange returning home though, to be so far away for so long, and then return home to my old room, my old friends, my family, and my dogs. Frankly, it was unsettling. My room was untouched, just as I had left it four months prior. The route from my home to my high school to pick up my sister was second nature. I don’t think my dogs even realized I was gone (which maybe confirmed my sister’s theory that they mistook her for both of us). It was so different, yet so familiar, and comforting in an offsetting way. 

I now had two homes, and it was a jarring experience to realize that I knew both places so well. Returning to campus was a similar experience. I got off the Glenside train and made the walk back to campus. A similar sensation to that of driving to pick up my sister in Florida filled me up. I was almost home. 

The second semester is something I wasn’t expecting. I was accustomed to year-long classes, so starting over like it was the beginning of the school year threw me off, and I think it’s something a lot of second-semester freshmen encounter. I’ve had to readjust to campus, and school life, with a different schedule, course load, and new extracurricular schedule from being in the Winter play, Trailblazers. 

Getting back in the swing of things after bouncing between school and home for the holidays, finals, and second semester is an adjustment I didn’t envision, but it’s nice to have both places and families in my corner.