Creating a home

As Dorothy said, there's no place like home. For most, the idea of home brings feelings of nostalgia and provides a sense of peace and comfort. We, as people, try to recreate these feelings of security wherever we go, whether our original "home" follows us or not. Whitson writes, "home involves an idealized meaning and social imagery, a physical and material reality, and a unique set of social relations" (2017). The physicality of a place can turn a space into a home; photos of loved ones lining the walls and your most prized possessions change the space from one without sense to one loaded with deep, personal meaning. The social relations of a place, as Whitson mentioned, also help to generate the sentiment associated with home. Surrounded by your beloved, nuclear or not, a home is built. Most of us will grow up in an established home that we can count on for the first 18 years of our lives. However, as we get older and move away what happens to our sense of home?

I struggled with this idea a lot when I first came to college. I knew Ohio University was to become my new home and I wanted so badly for it to happen right away, but it didn't. Not until almost the end of my Freshman year did I truly feel like I was at home here. Dorm life wasn't the only factor playing into my feeling of homelessness, but it was that deep social connection takes time to create, and it would be impossible to expect it within the first month of my college career. Many other college students resonate with this idea of being "homeless" while in their first few months of college. Nomad Victoria Gigante suggests that to create a home you need to do a few things: seek safety, explore, slow down, and most importantly connect with others (n.d.). Now that I am a junior, I would consider Athens more of a home than the place I grew up. I realized my home doesn't necessarily lie within the bricks and buildings that encompass Athens but in the relationships I have created here. It turns out Robin Hood was right after all, "Home is people. Not a place." (Quote Ambition, 2018). With graduation looming in the near future, I try to keep this in mind. No matter where I end up, a home will follow. It may not be the same home I have come to know here among the hills of Appalachia, but respite and serenity it will provide.

References
Gigante, V. (n.d.) How to feel at home wherever you are [Webpage]. Retrieved from https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-feel-at-home-wherever-you-are/

Quote Ambition. (2018). Top 80 home quotes and sayings [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.quoteambition.com/home-quotes-sayings/

Whitson. (2017). "Spaces of Culture and Identity Production: Home, Consumption, and the Media.”  Pp. 48-75 in Feminist Spaces: Gender and Geography in a Global Context by Ann M. Oberhauser, Jennifer L. Fluri, Risa Whitson and Sharlene Mollett.  New York: Routledge.