When I first came to college my understanding of what “home” is was irreparably changed, though not for the first time. I first felt this shift when I moved houses in fourth grade and changed schools a few times, but nothing compared to the new understanding that college has given me. I think anyone that lives on campus can attest to this change. Until the more permanent move to college I had only a surface understanding of homesickness. I didn’t think about the little things like eating dinner together with my family or even just eating dinner in the same place as I slept. But this new understanding goes beyond actually being at college. When I went home for my first break, I was surprised at how much I was missing college. Now, I don’t truly feel a full sense of being at home wherever I am. Whether it’s my dog or my roommates, I’m always missing someone. So I began to not know what a home was.
I didn’t know what to expect when I left home. When I thought about college, I knew I would miss my family, but I mostly thought about all the exciting and new things I would experience. I definitely didn’t grasp how much would change. So when I started to realize this, I had a hard time expressing it. Music has always helped me put what I’m feeling into words so it is what I turned to. These are some of the songs that helped me out.
“Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver – Leaving is so uncertain because you don’t know who you will be when you return.
“‘Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane / Don’t know when I’ll be back again / Oh babe, I hate to go.”
You have to leave; the ticket has been paid for, and there are things you need to go to. But the you that leaves may never come back, and the home you leave will never be the same. Whenever I go back to my home in Chicago everything feels different. My bunked bed feels shorter, the house feels quieter, my dog seems older. And there is so much uncertainty about leaving, which Denver’s tone encapsulates. It’s not as if he wants to leave. There’s a wistfulness to the line “Oh babe, I hate to go.” But even though you have all that uncertainty, all that change is going to happen, you have to go. Just as people must change and grow, so do places, or at least the way that we encounter them.
“Rivers and Roads” by The Head and the Heart – Distance makes a big difference (duh).
The song “Rivers and Roads” by The Head and the Heart perfectly depicts the melancholia of moving away. The summer before I left home for college I listened to this song on repeat. I tortured myself with the lyrics, “A year from now we’ll all be gone / All our friends will move away,” as I reminisced on the friendships I made in high school and thought about how fleeting those friendships might be. I thought about how different things would be when “my family lives in a different state.” So much was about to change, so I braced myself with these lyrics. A heartbroken voice sings “Rivers and roads / rivers and roads / rivers ‘till I reach you.” While there would only be a singular river for me when I moved from Chicago to St. Louis, I still felt (and continue to feel) the distance strongly. When I told people where I was going to college, I often got the “Oh, staying close to home” response. While there was some comparative truth in this statement, this “close” five-hour drive, felt rivers and roads away. Sometimes the distance doesn’t matter, just the fact that there is any at all changes things.
“Home” by Phillip Phillips – You are not alone and home can be made anywhere.
“Just know you’re not alone / ‘Cause I’m gonna make this place your home.”
I was very self-centered in my thinking about college at first. I missed my family so much and I didn’t understand how everyone was just making friends and fine with the fact that the childhood era of our lives was over, kaput. But when I found my roommate struggling with this too, I realized how foolish I was. College is a huge change for everyone (even if you don’t live on campus) and anyone who is acting like it isn’t or it isn’t affecting them is just not expressing it outwardly. But because it is something everyone is struggling with, no one is alone.
As Phillips says, it is an “unfamiliar road” that takes a lot of figuring out. How to climb out of your lofted bed without hurting yourself, where the best food on campus is and where to print, sure, but the big things take figuring out too. Who do I want to be on this campus? What kind of people do I want to surround myself with? And what is my plan for my life? These are questions that everyone wrestles with. But the third lesson from this song is that home can be made anywhere. I always liked the saying that my counselor in high school said about where you go to college, “You will grow where you are planted.” It was meant to calm us about our decision of what college we were going to attend and I would say an addition to that saying is that you will make the soil your own. You can find a way to get everything you need out of where you are, and even if things don’t immediately feel like home, a new sense of home can be constructed just about anywhere.
“Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Home is about people, not places.
Though this song is the last on my list, I think it is the most important. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros sing that, “Home is wherever I’m with you,” and then later, “Home is when I’m alone with you.” “Home” is so much more than the building with your family, or the building where you sleep. Home is a feeling, too. Places are the first thing we think of when we think of home, but these places evoke feelings–warm and cozy, safe and at peace–that we then often attribute to people. Perhaps it was never the place that was home, but instead the people inside it. This helped me understand how confused I felt when I went home for break. I would sit in my favorite spot on my family room couch and think “if this is home, why am I feeling homesick?” I had not realized that I had already made a new home with my friends at college. Even though I was home, I was homesick for them.
I still feel lost about so much of this and I could write about forty more songs that also clarified, expressed and further explained all these feelings. Instead of losing one home by going to college, I have made another for myself. Whenever I feel all those negative emotions I just listen to these songs and remember that I am not alone.