Freshman: How To Find Home Again

By Hannah Messinger on October 1, 2015

Home is the place you walk in and decide consciously to invest your life in. Your home could be your club, it could be your dorm, it could be that one class people actually talk to you in. It’s the place you walk into and immediately, reflexively, let your body relax while you laugh naturally for the first time all day. It’s the place on campus where when you trip up the stairs it doesn’t matter, or where when you knock over everything while jumping up and down during a heated game of Mario Kart, no one gives you weird looks. Home is more often a person than a place, maybe even a series of people if you’re lucky.

In college, the hardest and most crucial part of your experience is finding your home: the people that will invite you to Thanksgiving when you can’t afford a flight, or the people that will stand by you when you fail your math quiz and realize that maybe going out every night of the week wasn’t the best idea. There is nothing more important, nothing more telling about your next four years. But the thing is, freshman year is so transitional that no one you meet is permanent, no one you invest that sense of calm and comfort in is guaranteed to stay.

When it all breaks apart and we head for our own individual majors, when the world becomes a lot smaller but a lot bigger at the same time and you lose some of your people to space, everything gets a little bit harder. And that’s okay. My point in all of this is that you will find your home, you will find millions of them, and they will all be the most precious things you have for a time, or even permanently.

Finding this place isn’t ever simple. Sometimes you and your roommate just don’t click, and your suitemates always leave their stuff all over the bathroom, and you feel like you’re the only sane person left in your living space. Sometimes the cooking club you joined is actually full of people you would never want to hang out with and all their eating habits are horrible, and all you can think about is getting back to class, which is the first sign that you’re the crazy one. Sometimes when you go to the library or out to eat, you go alone.  While all of these things are okay, even if they don’t seem okay, you’re still left with this sense of sadness and lack of belonging. You shouldn’t be.

When all of the faculty, overly peppy older students, and everyone else basically scream at you to get involved, heed that advice, because it’s absolutely right. Get involved. Join a different club, and then another one after that. Maybe pick up an intermural team, or ten of them. Hang up your ENO amongst all the other ENOs on the main green and watch yourself make friends. Talk to that curly haired kid that always sits next to you in class. Don’t ever be ashamed of yourself, and always be kind. The first step to finding your home is looking for it, and realizing that everyone else is looking for theirs, too.

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