"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place. Like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place."

As everyone is winding down from dreadful finals with a week of no sleep, shooting coffee straight into our veins, and cramming as much information into our brains as possible, it's finally time for summer break and time to head back to our hometowns. It's back to rules and curfews. Back to full bellies and a handful of family arguments. Yet, once we are back home for a couple days, home begins to feel a little different than it use to.

It's crazy how when I was younger, being away from home for more than a couple days would make me miss home so much. How I'd miss eating dinner with my family and knowing that when I was going to bed, my parents were just down the hall to protect me. So of course leaving for college, at first, was that same longing of being back in my home while I was away.

But, at some point, something changes. One day you drive back to the town you grew up in, and realize you are longing for the new town that, maybe didn't raise you, but that built you. You find yourself calling the town you spend most of your time in, home. It's crazy how you'll end up not going home for months, and no sense of homesickness will even come within one hundred feet of you. It's as if you have outgrown your hometown and finally changed into your big kid pants.

Like I said, maybe this new home isn't exactly where you first learned to ride a bike. It isn't the place that you made your first set of forever friends. And it's definitely not the place you've spent the most amount of time. But, something about this new place is comforting to you. It's seen many late nights studying or stumbling home after a frat party. It's the place you fall in love for the first time (and fall apart for the first time) and realize that someone sitting in your seat you assigned yourself on the first day, really is a big deal. It's the place you learn to not lean on your parents as much, and lean on your own understanding. It's the place you've found friends to stand by you in the hardest time of your life. It's a place you can't seem to stay away from, even on weekends and school breaks.

They aren't kidding when they say, "Home is where the heart is." Although my heart will always have my hometown and wonderful memories in it, my heart now belongs to this new town that has changed me into the young adult I am today.