As the leaves started to fall and the New York City air got chillier, my anxiousness to go back home for the first time since move-in grew stronger and stronger. Like a lot of my peers, I was counting down the days until I could be reunited with my family, friends, pets, and - oh yeah - my bed. So when the day came for me to catch a shuttle to the airport for Thanksgiving break, I couldn't believe it.
Over the last three months at school, I've had a lot of growing up to do. Not only did I have to learn how to be 100% independent in terms of keeping up with cleaning and laundry, etc., but I had to keep up with homework, solve my own issues when they came up, forge new friendships, and find a way to deal with being away from everything I had known the 18 years prior. I was the farthest away I'd ever been from everything that I knew; and while this was scary, it was exactly what I needed to start to come into my own as a person.
Nothing can quite capture how it felt to be home for the first time after all of this growing. In a sense, however, I would describe being home again as dreamlike. Actually, scratch that - being home didn't feel dreamlike, but the last three months of college did. In the back of my family's car, on the way home from the airport, passing all the familiar sights, I asked myself, Did the last three months even happen? Something weird happens when you go back to something so normal after three months of new adventures.
But instead of home feeling boring, I felt like I was being reunited with an old friend. Yes, I was home again, but I was home this time as a different person, and I got to experience my hometown as someone like the "old" me, but better.
Prior to coming home, I wasn't told much about what to expect, which (admittedly) made me nervous. I knew I was going to love seeing my friends and family, but I didn't know what everything else was going to be like - Would it be weird sleeping in my room alone? What if my cat hated me for leaving? Would things be different between my friends and I?
Like normal, I was worried for nothing. Your first time back home from college might be weird at first (read: I was pinching myself to see if NYU was all a dream), but hopefully it feels just as refreshing for you as it did for me. Soak up the family time while you can (even if you weren't too close with your family before you left, distance really can make the heart grow fonder), see your friends, play with your pets, enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate, and - oh, yeah - enjoy sleeping in your own bed.
Lots of love,
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