Despite the fact that I couldn’t wait to get home during finals week, there’s only so much moseying around the main street of my hometown that I can do before I start missing Oberlin. My dad asked me the other day if, after two years, Oberlin had started to feel like home more than my home does, and I guess you could say it does. The summer before I left for school may have been the most nerve-wracking three-month period I can remember, filled entirely by college packing lists and my mom’s attempts at making a few last family memories before I left. We’re not a family that’s big on change. I guess I should’ve expected it, but the biggest change I notice now that my life is marked more by leaving school for home rather than leaving home for school is how much I am reminded of the day-to-day things I’d be doing at school.
On the “not-big-on-change” note, my family has been doing the same beach vacation in the same house with a dock on the bay on Long Beach Island since I was two years old. We went this past week, and it’s undoubtedly still one of my favorite times of year. Some people find our consistent routines boring, but I’ve always been a creature of habit. We have a favorite place to get coffee and breakfast every morning. The employees at Barry’s Ice Cream see us every other night at minimum. My mom has been beating us at the same mini golf course for several years in a row. The Jersey Shore and Oberlin College might have very few things in common, but one of those things is me.
Drinking my morning iced latte, I think back to all the mornings I met my friend for coffee before our art history class. I’m reminded of the second, third, fourth drinks we’d order in the afternoons while trying to make headway on essays. In between bouts of work, my girlfriend would join us to crack the day’s Wordle and Sudoku, a subtle attempt to avoid work without straying too far from enriching activities. Of course, this is not including the multiple times we would be interrupted by someone else we knew, from class or from around, coming to sit down for a minute or just to say hello.
Wind in my hair and sand creeping into the seams of my shoes and the fabric of my socks at the beach only feels a stone’s throw away from the day trip to Vermilion last fall. My friends and I piled into a Subaru after class to drive down to the lighthouse to see the sunset by the water. I agonized over Ohio’s unfortunate standing as a land-locked state when I first committed to Oberlin, but in the time since I’ve noticed that it only takes an open mind to see Lake Erie as an ocean-sized body of water.
The dock of our shore house beats Wilder Bowl in terms of weather and scenery but certainly not company. I have spent more time sitting in Wilder Bowl than I have in any other building on campus, including my dorm and Stevie. My friend Peyton and I did it so much the spring of our freshman year we justified it by calling our Bowl time ‘photosynthesizing.’ We were surely not putting off our work; this was necessary time to ourselves and soaking in the sun Ohio winter had blocked out. Some days, we’d be out there so long three or four different groups of people we know would come and go.
And though spending my Friday and Saturday night playing rummy with my cousins and grandmother was a good time, my favorite weekend nights will always be the ones spent getting ready to go out with my friends. Sharing clothes, changing outfits again, switching jewelry, switching drinks, taking pictures–that is my Friday at Oberlin.
I do love New Jersey–and trust me, I know out-of-staters don’t. I love being home just as much as I did before school. I love being at school just as much as that, though, it turns out. Maybe I’m really reaching to find similarities between LBI and Ohio. Maybe it’s easy to find anything, anywhere when you want to.
