Up until going away to college, I’ve only ever considered one place home, that being the apartment I spent my whole life growing up in. In fact, my concept of home had always been constricted to your place of residence. It wasn’t until coming to college when I realized that the concept of home meant so much more than it’s technical definition.
I clearly remember the mix of nerves and suppressed excitement I felt on the day of move-in. Dorm life was a rite of passage that I couldn’t wait to begin, but these feelings of excitement were clouded by anxiety of leaving the only home I’ve ever known. Being a whole six hours away from it only added to the anxiety that I was feeling. I was less intimidated of sharing a small, shared space, but rather being thrown into a foreign environment and living practically with strangers.
After being quickly and abruptly uprooted from my dorm room as a result of coronavirus, I increasingly miss little aspects of dorm life. I miss being able to take the brisk two minute walk to the Tercero Dining Commons and having the option of eating every meal with my best friends, always sitting in the same spot near the bistro. I miss the routine that my roommates and I had built of doing our night time routines at the same time in the gender neutral bathroom, where we’d inevitably bump into the same cycle of people from our floor. I miss the nights of cramming our friends into our dorm room for game nights or movie nights, hanging out on the window ledge wrapped in blankets, and even the noises of people running through the halls.
My first two quarters at Davis have shown me that home is a product of the people you surround yourself with, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the home I found in Madrone 306.