Homecoming. It’s a word that means many different things for different people. For Texans in high school, it’s all about the mum and garter making. Making everything so over the top and extravagant that by the time your senior year rolls around, you have to hold your mum around your neck by a ribbon. For most of the rest of the country, it’s about the true meaning of Homecoming: a chance for the alumni of the school to come back and see everyone. For college students and even alumni, Homecoming should be about the true meaning, and not about the mums, garters, and the competition for the Homecoming Queen and King.

I’m sure everyone knows the celebrations of Homecoming are different at each school. Depending on the school, the celebrations can be wild, time-consuming or just steeped in tradition. From Greek life and other organizations, putting up yard signs or decorating the homecoming float for the parade, competitions and games, Homecoming is always one of the most exciting weeks of the year for college students.

At the bigger schools, there are so many things that go into creating big and extravagant Homecoming displays and floats. Take The University of Alabama for an example. Greek life gets paired up to build their massive lawn decorations, but little do most people know how much time and effort is put into building these. To build a yard decoration, you have to have someone draw up a design, then you have to build the design in the yard. Then comes the hard part: after you build the designs, you cover that with chicken wire and then glue tissue paper inside the chicken wire to fill in with the colors. The hours of sweat and tears put into these designs is what makes Homecoming such a cool experience. There is nothing like looking at a decoration on your lawn that looks like a photograph when in reality it’s chicken wire and small pieces of paper.

For young alumni, Homecoming is a great time for them to come back to their schools to see friends that are still there and to relive their college experience for a few days. I know when I come back to my school for Homecoming, it will be a great weekend to visit my old classrooms and teachers. I’ll want to talk to the ones I’m close with about how I am doing outside of college. It is such a great opportunity as well to talk to the undergraduates about what it is like in the real world and how to handle the transition from graduation to being a real adult. For the older alumni, they like to come back 25 to 30 years later to see the traditions continuing. They also like to see how the University has changed and expanded since they graduated.

Homecoming is such an outstanding tradition in many schools, big or small. Some people may love the traditions, parades, and games, but others may like the personal connections they are able to make. The point of Homecoming is to bring together the graduates and undergraduates in a place that has changed their lives forever.