It has happened time and time again. You might as well tell you mom you hate her, call her fat, and break her favorite lamp, because the pain she would feel is equivalent to the hurt that follows the single mistake every college kid nationwide is guilty of making: accidentally calling college “home” in front of your family. Before you even realize what you did, you can physically see your mom’s heart breaking, and there is nothing you can possibly say to take it back. In fact, the hole you’re digging deepens with each word you stutter, until it is just about large enough for you to jump into.

Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator

The intensity of the guilt that follows this unfortunate event is enough to want to actually dig a hole in the ground and crawl in. But even though we can visualize why this mistake hurts our parents so harshly, there really is nothing wrong with calling college your “home.” Really, your parents should be proud that you’re making this claim, because if you don’t love your school enough to call it “home,” you’re probably not in the right place.

You’ve lived under your parents’ roof for eighteen years. They’ve fed you, provided for you, and helped you make every decision throughout your entire life. All of a sudden you go off to college and you’re in a completely new place with new people, new living arrangements, and a new independence. In order to thrive in the way you and your parents want you to, you had to make some serious adjustments really fast. You forced yourself to meet people and do adult things that you’ve never had to do before (as simple as it was, buying my own stamps was an ah-ha moment for me). After weeks, months, and years of living and doing everything here, here becomes familiar to you. It’s where your life has grown in ways you haven’t grown before. Your best friends become your college family and your dorm room or apartment or less than impressive house is where all of your homey clutter (and food) is. You now spend a majority of your life here, so treating it as anything but home would be counterproductive and miserable. Residing in your hometown was your parents’ choice, and despite the endless love and gratitude you have for it, you had no say in where you grew up or went to school. You did, however, chose to be here, and here is where the rest of your life begins, however YOU want it to.

Your hometown will always have your heart. It’s where your earliest, fondest memories were made. It’s where you fell in love with your favorite sport and graduated high school. You loved, hurt, thrived, failed, cried, laughed, and grew there. Nothing will be able to replace your hometown. It’s where your family, high school friends, pets, and comfort is. No one is asking you to forget about this sacred place, and you shouldn’t want or have to.

So family, please don’t take it personally when I call college “home.” I call this place “home” with pride, admiration, and gratitude, just as I do when I tell my college friends about my hometown. I’ve had to make adjustments and work really hard to come out of my comfort zone enough to be utterly and completely comfortable here, and I am absolutely in love with it. On the other hand, where you are is where I am most myself, and that means more to me than words can describe. As they say, home is where the heart is, and mine happens to be in two places at once.