Who says you can't go home?

You stepped out of your parents’ car on move-in day. You caught that hot southern Indiana sun on your face. You saw the beautiful campus you’d get to call home for the next four years, and you finally felt it.

Freedom.

Freedom from your parents’ nonsensical rules, freedom from your small town and freedom from the clenching boredom of the summer you just spent at home, watching Netflix and eating all day.

Then you get in the groove of things and start to get a lay of the land. You can get to each class without getting hopeless and miserably lost. You’ve made at least a few friends and been to at least a couple of awkward house parties where you knew a grand total of six people.

Then you get even more comfortable. You’ve found your social groove. You’ve truly begun to settle in. You have a legitimate routine day-to-day and week-to-week.
But something’s missing — home.

You told yourself it was uncool to want to go home. I mean, come on, you’re in college, man! Sex, drugs and rock and roll. And that’s all just in your dorm building.

But then you sat down at your computer and Facebook crept on yourself. You saw all the pictures of everything you missed about your hometown — your best friends, your favorite greasy chicken finger place and hell, even the halls of the high school you dreaded with such a burning passion.

It all felt so familiar. So warm.

You gave in. You went home for that 3-day heresy of a “vacation” our University has dubbed Fall Break.

And it was magical.

It was everything you’d expected and more. It was seeing your best friends, eating your favorite greasy chicken fingers and driving around on those roads you missed so much.

Then you got back to campus — slightly to your chagrin — and realized that somehow, defying all logic, you were still cool. And your friends hadn’t completely abandoned you.

You realized that you could go home and still be cool.

In college, we’re taught by the example of those around us, notably the upperclassmen, that going home is for losers, for people who have nothing else to do on the weekends. That we’re undergrads in college now, which means we’re fully independent and should only make contact with our parents when absolutely necessary.

I beg to differ.

The coolest kids are the ones who are social on campus, but still go home every once in a while, just to clear their heads and give themselves the break they deserve.
Bloomington’s great. But no city on Earth will ever hold a candle to Columbus, Ohio.
Because Columbus, Ohio, is my home.

And even though I’ve got a lot of really exciting things happening for me in the next month, nothing seems quite as exciting as getting in my car on that third weekend of October and hitting the road eastbound on I-70, pulling up into my driveway and being greeted at the door by my parents’ and dogs’ hugs and kisses.

— ihajinaz@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Ike Hajinazarian on Twitter @_IkeHaji.