Many of Lipscomb’s students are born and bred in Nashville. Those that aren’t are usually from fairly nearby. Lipscomb’s not a huge school, and it’s not greatly well-known outside of the south, so this makes sense. But some of us have found our way to this lovely college we call home from different areas of the US and even different areas of the world — because heaven knows we can’t commute. Here are some things we can probably all relate to if we made more than a 20 hour drive to get here.

1. “So how’d you hear about Lipscomb?”

Like I said, Lipscomb isn’t a big school. I only heard about it through a pamphlet they sent me in the mail, and I only applied because of the Trustee scholarship. Luckily, the application for that scholarship requires an in-person interview, which made me come out and tour the campus. I loved it here, and I stayed. And, being from California, I’ve had to tell that story a lot.

2. “Where’s your accent from?”

You might not think Californians have an accent, but trust me, we do. Think of words like “like” and “you guys.” Those are really common in California talk and make us stick out like sore thumbs when we’re somewhere else. And it’s only worse for people whose every word is laden with an accent, no matter how thick. Yes, we get it; we talk differently!

3. We don’t get to go home for Thanksgiving and Spring Breaks.

One week simply isn’t worth the multi-hundred dollar plane ticket. And don’t even get me started on weekend holidays where the entire campus practically turns to a ghost town. We can’t afford to be making all these trips home. And the struggle increases on those week-long breaks because we can’t stay in the dorms. We have to find local friends to let us live with them for a whole week. It’s a bit of a challenge.

4. We have to do our own laundry.

My friend goes home every weekend so her mom can wash her clothes. We don’t have that luxury. We have to drag our laundry baskets and our detergent to the laundry room ourselves (which is up a flight of stairs in my dorm). You get used to it after a while, but it’s still irritating when someone complains about how their mom does their laundry.

5. Weekends.

Weekends can be incredibly boring unless you’re willing to drive somewhere (or have a lot of homework). Everyone who commutes isn’t on campus, and a lot of the people who live on campus go home. True, it’s not as bad as three day weekends. But it still gets kind of lonely.

In the end, we make do. We all have our reasons for being so far away from home; that’s why we’re still here! I personally can’t wait for the opportunity to see my folks again, but I know that’s not true for everyone. We aren’t unified in our backgrounds, but we can be unified in being far away from home.