“Said the liar” was always a favorite phrase of mine. In my annoying Ugg-boots-and-jean-skirt-wearin’ days back in the eighth grade, I thought I was just so hilarious by tacking these three words onto the end of anything out of anyone’s mouth. After progressing through “your mom,” “OMG,” “ayy bay bay,” and “YOLO,” I thought that the age of the sayings would finally be over with; or rather, start to mature.

But in August of 2012, it made reappearance.

“Soon enough you’ll be calling this place home,” my mother said optimistically as she left for my real home. Walking back up to my dorm room, I was less than convinced that this statement would be true. There were four white walls, two windows, a stripped bed, a desk, and a dresser. There was nothing extraordinary about the room, just that it was mine and mine alone.

Although it was a major change from roughly the past 217 months, it was a change that I was more than ready to make. Moving day: whether you are one to admit it or not, everyone walks in with large, hopeful eyes, ready to “start fresh” and to begin a new chapter in their lives. The first day of my freshman year, what stuck out to me was the plainness of the walls. Their bright, untouched look made me want to throw paint at them. These rooms that suddenly became occupied last Fall are opportunities to show who the people residing in them are.

If you lofted your bed, you’re efficient. If you half-lofted your bed, you don’t finish tasks and are easily distracted; you finish papers the night before. If you leave your bedroom as it was when you first moved in, you are either a boy, lazy, or you don’t give any flying anythings.

But after your room was completed, what then? People change up their rooms in hopes for a certain sense of comfort. Can you truly call college (yes, college, not just your dorm room) home? Can the clock tower and the sometimes-annoyingly-crowded blue bridge remind you of fond memories that embrace you whenever you go back? For some, they would respond yes, but after asking a friend of mine this very question, he asked me what qualifies as a home? Is it the place or the people?

I will admit, being in the house that I grew up in by myself feels foreign, but being with the people that I love in a random and unvisited place does not feel like home either. Maybe home is a combination of everything that we take for granted: the place, the people, the memories.

You may be asking yourself why, this late in the year, I am writing about “home.” However, it is not because I miss it. Leaving to come back to GV, I caught myself saying “okay, going back home.” I only noticed when my sister asked “which one?”