This was my first Thanksgiving home from college, and I noticed a few things. The first thing I noticed was how different my room, and house in general, felt compared to when I left. After that, I realized that there were other things that had changed as well, myself certainly being one of them.
My room felt enormous, probably because there isn't much space that's only mine in my dorm. Which is fine. I also found it strange how my closet wasn't directly across the room from my bed, and how my hamper and drawers weren't under my bed. Speaking of beds, it was extremely odd to be able to just sit down on my bed instead of having to parkour up onto it. These all made me realize how used to college life I had become.
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I also noticed how different the people were. What I mean is that it was strange not seeing similar people every day. It was weird not to run into the same few people each day at breakfast or lunch, and to be able to eat in the same building that I slept. I kept thinking that I saw friends from campus around town when I was running errands, but it wasn't them, of course. I also missed the banter between me and my roommate in our dorm, but her ridiculous snapchat updates almost made up for it.
On the flip side, though, it was fun to reminisce and see people I hadn't seen in a while. I went back to my high school to see my old teachers, and realized two things: 1) high school is quite a bit smaller than I thought it was when I was there, and 2) they're teachers. At college, the professors are "professor". But in high school, they're all your "teachers." I was trying to readjust my brain and call them all my teachers, but somehow my brain couldn't quite allow it, despite being fine with changing "classes for next year" to "classes for next semester."
I found these a bit odd, but people had told me that coming back for Thanksgiving for the first time was the biggest change from high school to college. No one had every specified how exactly things or people had changed, and that was, I think, because we're the one who've changed. We have grown older and more mature; we know ourselves and our minds better than we did before because we've been exposed to new people and new viewpoints since last we saw everyone and everything. It was a strange experience, but a good one.
All that said, I'm ready to go back to campus and see everyone there and resume my classes, even if the post-Thanksgiving workload that precedes finals is likely to kill me.
