TEEN CENTER :: COLLEGE CENTER : FRESHMAN JOURNAL

FRESHMAN JOURNAL: DECEMBER 8, 2006
The Same, but Different

Ashley C. Sawyer

"Are you going home for Thanksgiving?" was the message on my cellphone from several of my high school friends. Not only was it a new feeling to be away from these people that I have known for so long-people who at one point I was accustomed to seeing on a daily basis-but it also is ironic to be calling them my "high school friends". They were once just my friends, without the prefix, and now that are vestiges of a younger me at a different stage in my life.

"High school friends" was not the only title change. While I was at the house that my family lives in, I began to say that I was visiting, and that I would be going back "home"-meaning to my dorm at Rutgers at the end of the weekend. When did school become home and home become a vacation spot? I am really beginning to realize how adjusted I have become to my new environment and how my life has changed.

As I walked through my house, I realized the environment had not changed significantly, but the minor changes and upgrades reminded me that I had been away. Food was stored in a different cabinet and the foyer table was in a different room-insignificant changes I assume. Still, I felt a little like an outsider when I realized that I did not help move the food, and I did not know who moved the foyer table. Some small details made the house seem like someone else's-not a stranger's home because too much of it was familiar, but the house of a close relative. It felt like somewhere I had been often but was not my own.

At the annual "Back from College Gathering," my closest friends from high school celebrated the approach of the end of our first semester in college. But just like in my house, some small details had been adjusted. At every turn, someone was grabbing my arm for a "Facebook picture" as if our very presence in the same location was some sort of special event. Last year these same people would be far more relaxed and nonchalant about being around each other, but because of the distances and experiences that were now between us, we were excited to be coming together. We talked about senior-year parties, teachers, prom, graduation and summer vacation as if they were ages ago. Yet it was just six months ago when we were all the same-when we did not say things like "Oh, at my school the semester ends in January" because my school was our school.

This is not to say that the differences were overwhelming or that I was sad to go home, because prior to Thanksgiving I had been counting down the days until I returned. My joy and excitement was not just about food either. I was really excited to see who had found the "love of their life" in college, who had made their dreams come true, who had been successful, and of course to quietly snicker at whoever put on their "freshman 25" or whoever was on the border of failing out of school.

At home, it was great getting a majority of the attention at Thanksgiving because I was the first child home from college. It was wonderful to have your family pretend that I was the guest of honor visiting as an ambassador for some distant country. It was even better when it was time to share what we were thankful for this Thanksgiving and my younger brother announced he was thankful to have me back home. It also was slightly ironic because if it were six months earlier, we probably would have been trying to kill each other. But I was someone different. I was not the bossy older sister or the daughter who stayed out too late, or the friend who never wanted to see the movie everyone else wanted to see, but the special guest. I was different; we were all different.

As much as anyone could try to deny it, we were all in a new phase of our lives. I was different from my "high school friends" and they were different from me. We had experiences, professors and roommates of our own. For once we were not members of the same social group, but individuals. Within my family, I was also no longer just a daughter, sister, niece or cousin, but someone who was special enough to sit at the "adult table" and who sat in the living room after dinner with the adults and contributed to the conversation.

My first Thanksgiving as a college student not living at home proved to be the beginning of my identity as someone new. It made me thankful that even if things were not the same, I could still go home. For the rest of my life, I will be a member of my family-my father and mother's daughter, my brother's sister-but I will also be separate, as I have started my own life with my own stories to share.