“Union to me is home right now because I have friendships here that I really value, and I’m probably not going to be in Jackson forever… but that doesn’t really affect that I feel at home here right now because no place has ever been permanent for me,” senior journalism major Josiah Mancha said. “It’s always been about the people that you’re there with.”
Not many Union students are able to say they have lived in a foreign country. In fact, many Union students have never lived outside of Tennessee. But this past week, I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to two Union students who have not only spent years of their life in foreign countries, but also lived in multiple states across America.
Mancha and Madeline McGill are two Union students who have had a parent in the military. I spoke with both, hoping to better understand their unique experiences.
Mancha has lived in five states and one country, South Korea. Thus, the question “Where are you from?” is complicated for him. He generally says that he is from New Mexico, even though he only lived there the first year of his life, because it has “been the most constant place in [his] life.”
What I found interesting was that he made a distinction between being from somewhere and calling somewhere a home.
McGill, a sophomore communication studies major, shared a similar perspective on home.
“I use home very easily… if I’m going to my dorm, I’m going home because its just like a comforting place for me because it’s wherever I feel safe, wherever I feel comfortable,” McGill said.
McGill lived in Germany for six years. Most of her community came from the military base where her dad served in a civilian role. The hard part of having a family member working for the military is that either you or your friends are constantly moving. McGill went to an American high school in Germany, and only about 20 of the people she graduated with were there from the beginning to the end of her time in high school.
I was curious to know how this turnover in friendships impacted her. Was it easier to make friends or harder?
“There’s so much changing happening in that military community that we have. I was always making new friends,” McGill said.
Even though it was hard to lose the friends she made, she enjoyed meeting new people. But moving can be difficult, and both McGill and Mancha struggled with moving to new places.
“I lived in Georgia for two and a half years and that was the shortest that we’d ever lived somewhere,” Mancha said. “I got to live there during my first two years of high school, and that’s where I made my closest high school friends. Even when we moved again I stayed very close to them.”
Mancha’s last two years of high school were spent in Virginia, and the move was hard because he did not want to move away from his Georgia friends. It was harder for him to push himself to make new friends when he lived in Virginia, especially because he could still visit his Georgia friends every once in a while. Nevertheless, he emphasized the importance of community and explained that in some ways moving so much made the transition to college easier for him.
“When I came to college, starting over in a new place and making new friends was no big deal because it was a thing that was very comfortable and familiar to me at that point,” Mancha said.
Despite the struggles of moving so much, Mancha and McGill shared some of the benefits of living in so many places.
McGill traveled around the world, visiting London, Paris, Normandy, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and a small country called Estonia. Her favorite place was London, which she visited three times.
“They have the perfect mix of culture and history and modernization to where you get a little bit of everything, and I also just love English history,” McGill said.
McGill also loved visiting the Globe Theatre (where Shakespeare put on many productions) and seeing three different Broadway musicals.
“I saw Phantom there, I saw Wicked there… It was so cool!” McGill said.
Mancha also had an amazing memory from Seoul, South Korea. In this city there is a tower called the N Seoul Tower, and Mancha and his family went almost to the top of it.
“Seeing the really vast cityscape at night and all the lights with the city next to the mountain, I don’t even know how to really describe it. It was beautiful. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen,” Mancha said.
But what seemed to be even better than the unique view was the memories that he shares with his family from the experience:
“I was doing something really unique and rare just with my family,” Mancha said. “I had this awareness that this is an experience we’re having together that is just us, and that we’re going to share these experiences for the rest of our lives as a thing that only we lived through together.”
I encourage you to ask people about their stories. Not only will you hear something really interesting, but you will also gain a new perspective. I know I did.
