Home Again

Samantha Strub

(July, 2010)  In college you change and grow up. It’s a fact of life, you start changing into the person you want to be now that you’re not under rules and you can do what you want. In choosing what you want you decide whether you want to be responsible or to float your way through life. You decide whether you want to take your studies seriously or just enjoy the fun part of college and not care about your grades. The later to me makes no sense. You go to college to get a degree, thus that means taking your studies seriously working toward your final goal. I would save all the money that goes into tuition if I just wanted to have fun at college.

I choose to take life in stride and work towards my goals for the future; taking the small, irrelevant baby steps, in order to achieve those goals. My baby steps right now in my life are surrounded by the bigger picture—working hard, dreaming big, and having faith. Along the way excepting that life isn’t always going to give you everything you want. Life throws you wild curve balls that surprise you, thrill you and hurt you. All you can do is take those wild curve balls for what there worth and focus on what you know best. For some people it’s running, sports like soccer or basketball, music, etc. Everyone has a passion in life that helps you get through the roller coaster, for me its writing and horses. Having these things in my life keeps me going; they set the reset button in my life and let me put the stepping stones of life into perspective and move forward with my life.

Making the tradition between college and home is quite a challenge. Even though you have living at school for only a year and you have lived at home for 18 years, it still feels like you are walking into a world that you don’t belong in. Changes have been made in your house that you had no idea had taken place and yet your family still accepts you to notice them right away. Like walking into my kitchen—who knew I was going to walk into a totally different room when I came home. Somehow it felt enough like home that I didn’t notice, right away, that almost everything from the tile to the lights, and the handles on the cabinets were different.

It’s sad, weird, and serial when you realize that life still goes on after you leave and move on. You are excited to move on yourself but you don’t realize that the people you left behind still have lives to life. You come back thinking that things will go right back to normal as if you have never left but then you get back home again and you realize you were completely wrong. Everyone at home has moved on with their lives and now you are sitting outside watching everything take place. Deep down though you figured something like this would happen because during that year away you came back a changed person. You are independent doing your own thing every day of your life then all of a sudden you return home and you have nothing to do. Jobs are hard to come by and your friends who you thought you were close with have drifted away.

So you are left with the family that you love dearly but still drives you crazy after a week, few close friends, and for me my horse. That’s no way to live your summer; thinking about what have could have been if you have kept in touch with people from your old high school or if you already had gotten a job before coming home. You need to get out there and job hunt and enjoy the moments with, your family and your true friends that take your breath away.

Being home the people around you will see that you have changed. Some will find it positive and others will make comments saying that you have become to blunt, crud and falling away from your morals. Thinking that your beliefs have changed and they are taking the sweet innocent girl that left away. In a way that is true; some of your beliefs, and your way of thinking may have changed. It’s then when you have to decide when to accept the criticism and when to know that you are the same person as always and you’re here to stay whether they like it or not.

The struggles in life are there to make you stronger. In the long run they will all make sense to you. Right now they are just a pain because they are huge mountains that you have to climb but reality they are just pebbles in the roller coaster ride called life. The changes make you stronger, tougher, wiser, makes you a fighter. They are there to test you and make your skin a little bit thicker so you can handle it when a mountain later falls on you. In the long run all the hardships that you are going through now will make the joys in life appreciated that much more.

Samantha is now a Sophomore at the Mount majoring in English

Read past editions of Samantha Strub's Four Years at the Mount