There’s nothing like returning back to campus after some time away. It really makes you realize just how unique an experience at Oberlin is compared to life outside of school. Today’s the first Monday back after Spring Break, but somehow my visit to Toronto already feels like it happened a lifetime ago. I had a great time with my friends exploring a new and very cold city, but opening the door to my dorm room gave me that familiar feeling of comfort that I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing dearly for a week. It was around the second semester of my first year when I really felt like I could begin to call Oberlin “home” – when the scent of my room started feeling cozy and the view outside my window every morning started to feel like a natural part of my routine. On days like today, after days of not being able to wake up and look out my window at the quiet, sunny South Quad, I’m reminded yet again of how comforting a feeling it is to be at home.
That idea of having to find comfort in an unfamiliar place was something I always dreaded when considering the prospect of going to college. Even years and years before I had to cross that bridge, I would lie awake at night and wonder in my little bunk bed how I would be able to sleep as soundly as I did at home, an adult who’d one day be unable to lull myself to sleep with the familiar patterns of my little sister’s breathing in the bunk below. As I grew up and started to slowly feel more independent about school, friends, and responsibilities, that feeling died down a little. But there was still that ever-pressing fear in the back of my mind that I knew I was going to have to face.
I remember that first night in Fairchild 103, the day my parents left to go back home to New York. I was staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I had already seen and done on campus, even after only being there a few days. I was able to sleep a lot better that night than my ten-year-old self thought I’d ever be able to. And since then, that certainty has only gotten stronger. The friends I’ve made, the classes I find myself immersed in day in and day out, even the patches of muddy grass I stain my pants sitting in throughout Tappan Square – they’re all the things I would have longed for the comfort of if I had gone anywhere else for college. Right now, a lot of you are probably facing the same feeling of unease I didn’t want to admit to having all the way through my senior year of high school. Am I ever going to feel at home away from home? After over a year of back and forth from city to city, traveling and exploring and always returning back, I can safely say that Oberlin’s as home as ever.
