When I moved back home at the beginning of the pandemic last spring, I decided it was time to clean out my bedroom. As the sentimental person that I am, I still had stuffed animals from my childhood. They were proudly displayed all over my room, and I still remembered the names of most, if not all, of them. When I walked into my room, I was flooded with memories from my childhood.
This was not just a decision to clean out my room; this was an important part of the transition college students constantly live in. I didn’t want my room to look like a middle school girl’s room anymore, and I didn’t need these stuffed animals—though I did keep those dearest to my heart. It was time for me to move on.
Legally, most college students are adults, but a majority of us are still very reliant upon our parents. We don’t live in our childhood homes year-round, but we still visit our families and maybe live with them for a few months of the year. Many of us have part-time jobs, but we don’t make enough to pay all the bills “real adults” have. We also can’t keep the job year-round since most of us leave for the summer. We’re stuck in this in-between where we are learning to provide for ourselves but still asking our parents for help from time-to-time.
For seniors, this in-between can be especially difficult as they reach the end of their time as traditional students. They’re on the precipice of being “real adults,” but they are still just barely here with the rest of us as they begin to take on a few more responsibilities.
“It’s difficult, learning how to balance classes while also applying for jobs and scheduling job interviews,” Ashleigh Slusmeyer, senior English and Christian studies double major, said. “It’s exciting to look forward to the future, but I’m also trying to cherish my short time left here.”
Along with this in-between comes a redefining of what and where home is. The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines “home” as a variety of things, including one’s place of residence, where a family unit dwells, where one is from, etc.
In addition to these technical definitions, there are common mantras of today’s world, like “home is where the heart is” or “home is a person, not a place.” According to Daniel Howe, sophomore graphic design major, “home is where I sleep the most.” Obviously Howe isn’t going through the existential crisis I go through when I try to define home.
If the Merriam-Webster definitions are taken at face value, it’s hard to determine where home really is for most people, unless you’re like Howe and this is simple for you. Our permanent address is hours away, but our shipping address is the Union University post office. We can’t leave all our belongings in one place all year, but we also don’t need all our kitchen supplies if we move back into our family’s home for the summer. We need part-time jobs during the year, but we can’t keep them over the summer, or vice versa. We are split between at least two places.
Many freshmen feel this shift and pull when they leave home for the first time.
“I do feel that this is kind of home now…while I miss my family when I’m here, when I’m back home, I miss my friends. It’s this pull in between,” Micah Diaz, freshman business major, said. “Both are home for me. A home is a place that you would live for an extended period of time.”
As you get to know your roommates, classmates and new town, you may feel this pull in two directions. Suddenly, you realize that home cannot be defined as something simple like where you live, where you’re from or where your family lives. This is the point here the saying “home is where the heart is” comes in handy.
For most of us, home is not just a physical place. Home involves a feeling of safety, love and peace. Even Merriam-Webster recognizes this when they define the phrase “at home.” They say being at home means being in a familiar area and/or to be relaxed. Oftentimes, these feelings are associated with who we are with, not just where we are.
“Maybe home comes from family,” Diaz said. “Like when people say, ‘I want a home,’ I think it comes with the connotation that they want people in their home.”
Even if we define home as more of a feeling of comfort than a particular place, we are living between two or more places. Our hearts are with our families, but they are also with our friends. We cherish the people and memories of our childhood, but we are being pushed towards adulthood and away from our high school friends. Some of us may say our hearts are also in places we’ve visited or mission sites we’ve worked on. Potentially, this will be a dilemma for the rest of our lives. Most of us will have some pull from our childhood home no matter how far removed we are from those memories or people.
There will likely always be some form of living in the in-between for us, but college is a unique time where we don’t quite qualify as “real adults,” but we’re also not children. We don’t live in our childhood home, but we also haven’t really moved out. We’re on the precipice of true adulthood, but we’re not quite able to reach it yet.
When I go home next time, instead of walking into my room to find stuffed animals my childhood best friend and I used to act out scenes, make horrible videos and get codes for Webkinz, I will see my favorite books, pictures and awards around my childhood bedroom.
Memories from high school and college flood my mind when I walk in and see the shelves my dad made for me to display my favorite things. I’m still flooded with sentimentality when I look around the light teal walls of my room, but it’s of a different kind of sentiment as I mature from childhood to adulthood. More important than the sentiment is the reminder of what is still yet to come in this transition to being a “real adult” as I realize that I will always have multiple homes.
