By Selina Chen
Tonight’s the night. Clothes pile up in nooks and crannies of my dorm. Forgotten chores and unfinished homework slap me in the face. Things are awry, and laundry is undone, but no one can convince me that successfully packing a day before isn’t efficient!
It’s the time of the year where coach buses park one after the other to pick up tired students anxious to go home. Whether it be a few days for Thanksgiving or a month-long winter break, returning Cornellians are familiar with the ritual and routine of packing. Some are ecstatic to be rescued from exam-season horrors, while others wish they could stay for a range of reasons.
Perhaps feelings change by year, but many students will always welcome the comforting prospect of home with open arms, no matter how far. “I think going back home just feels like childhood again … in some ways, it felt like I could finally be myself again,” First-year Jennifer Ng ’29 mentions. Jennifer says home — New York City — is her favorite space. Likewise, sophomore Annie Park ’28 also reveals feeling relief on the bus ride back, saying she finally felt “rejuvenated” away from the pressures of university.
In contrast, others are excited by the new opportunities college brings about in people, places and experiences. Catherine Chen ’28 expresses, “I enjoy being in college more because I get to experience being friends with people from different backgrounds and living life in a different way from the past 18 years of my life.” Jennifer and Annie both prefer the familiarity of their home in New York City, whereas Catherine enjoys the new territory quite a ways from Boston.
Furthermore, Chen says, “I feel like with my parents especially, they’ve always taught me to be independent, so it hasn’t been a big problem.”
Different students have different relationships with independence in college. For some, having freedom in their choices is nothing new, and for others, it is the first time they are able to make choices without family influence. Annie shares a different perspective, “At home I can’t go out past nine, and then here I can be out until as long as I want.”
Regardless, the overall atmosphere of bustling lecture halls and dining rooms filled with thousands of students our age is a first for all. Students all agree that college grants them newfound freedom as one of the most dramatic life transitions from young teenager to adulthood. After our parents drop us off (against their will), we are suddenly faced with an entirely new life in our control. We are responsible for balancing schoolwork and social life as well as taking care of ourselves day-to-day. We have to somehow figure out how to eat healthy while being a good friend and a good roommate and a good group member all at the same time. Sometimes, it can get really overwhelming.
Park says, “I think it’s also really different because at school, I’m always doing work, like I always have stuff to do.”
It can also be just as rewarding to learn life skills and make mistakes along the way. As a first-year especially, Ng says, “I would never have to do my own laundry at home … it feels like I’m truly living now.”
For me, college has always felt more like home than my hometown, but in an oddly transient way. It seems like as I settle in, I am transported back to a version of myself that left when I left for college a little over a year ago. I don’t recognize her in the slightest, yet she greets me in folded pink sheets and childhood stuffed animals on a shelf of dusty memories. She paralyzes me in sliced fruit and hugs from Mom that are just too tight for the distance in our relationship. I came all this way because that’s what breaks are for — because they were expecting me. They hurry me to homemade seafood and traditional favorites, and it smells just like home. But it feels more bittersweet than sweet alone.
Like clockwork, their excitement turns to bickering and nagging I am all too familiar with until they smother me with miscellaneous supplies I’ll never use and reminders to stay warm minutes before I leave again. I’m sure my experience is universal among Asian Americans.
Bus rides are their own kind of journey — physical or emotional. Take that as you will. Personally, there is nothing better to look forward to than a five-hour ride on public transportation with fully charged AirPods and unresolved feelings to process. Park reveals, “I just reflect on my past few weeks because I usually don’t have time to just sit and do nothing, so I think in that way, bus rides are kind of nice.”
And like clockwork, I am back in my college self. As a transfer sophomore student, whether it is Binghamton or Ithaca, I feel the ebbs and flows of my identity across the snowy terrain of Upstate New York to and from Long Island each break. Things mesh into an unexplainable blur, as if different versions of me exist in different places. However, I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason, and it is possible to belong in more than one place at once. Perhaps I will continue to wonder where my heart truly lies. That being said, I can’t wait for my bus ride home this Thanksgiving. Prelims have me on my deathbed.
Selina Chen is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at sc3543@cornell.edu.
