Just a short seven or so months ago, I was sitting amongst 1400 of my high school peers on presumably one of the most important days of my life. I looked to my left and I saw my lifelong best friend getting ready to attend a different college than me, and I looked to my right and I saw my entire family waving at me and smiling from ear to ear. I was about to walk across the stage, grab my diploma, throw my cap up into the air, pack my life into a few boxes, leave home (and life as I knew it), and head to college. I repeat, I was about to leave home and life as I knew it… and head to college.

Everyone always tells you that college is “so refreshing; it’s where you’re likely to spend the best four years of your life, it’s where you’re going to meet your best friends and your people, and it’s evidently going to become your new home.” This idea was incredibly unsettling to me as I wasn’t mentally prepared to press pause on my current life with my friends, family, and home and replace it with a new life, a new “home.” Needless to say, I was terrified.

The day I departed for college was the most perplexing and emotional day of my life; it occurred to me that I would never again be able to call my home “home.” No matter how often I would return to my home on weekends or holidays during the school year, I realized that I would be living out of a suitcase, not my familiar closet. So that led me to believe that my new home was now UF, because that’s where my clothes hang in my new closet, that’s where my new desk and new bed are and, because of that, that’s where my new life is.

To be honest, the first couple of weeks of college didn’t live up to the social media hype. And while college might have literally become my new “home,” it certainly didn’t feel like it. I felt as if my home friends were stripped away from me and the settling feeling that I had at home my entire life was gone. Then, I began to get inside my head thinking: “this feeling at college doesn’t feel like home” and wondering when I would have a feeling of being at home again. But that was until it finally did…

While I don’t always have my home friends by my side, I have met some of the most unbelievable new college friends. And while all of my friends, home and college, are so different, I couldn’t imagine my life without each and every one of them in it. While I don’t have my family with me, I have people who I have grown to consider almost like my family: they’re there for me when I need them. And while I don’t have my bed from home, I’ve grown to love and appreciate my bed in college just as much. And to all of these things, I’m so incredibly thankful. I’m thankful because I’ve found the comfort of home in a place that I didn’t think possible. I’m thankful because I’ve found new friends who I love and who love me back. And looking back, while it seems so weird that I’ve found the comfort of “home” in this new place, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

So, as I reflect back on my first semester of college, I am now able to realize what “home” really is. Sure, it’s the literal structure that you grow up in and it’s the familiar family and friends that you’ve known your entire life, but it’s actually much more. Home is any place where you’re comfortable being and it’s any place that encompasses the people you love. Although the journey getting to this place where I’ve redefined “home” was difficult, I can gladly say that I found the comfort of home at UF.