Ali Jackson | Home isn't where the heart is

I love everything about this place.

I love the way the snowflakes on Locust Walk stay up until April, how no one rakes fallen leaves for at least a week and how eating food prepared in the back of a truck is commonplace.

For the past two years, I haven't just gone to school at Penn - it's been my home. Since midway through freshman year, going back to California has felt like a visit. Of course, I love my parents and I miss my high-school friends terribly, but I still feel most comfortable here.

Most of this came to me over break last week. My mom asked me to get some napkins from the bar, and it took me a few solid minutes to find them.

"You'd think you didn't live here," my dad joked. "I don't," I replied immediately.

It was then that I realized what I've just told you. And that got me thinking about how other people feel about going home (or not going home, as the case may be), and how that feeling changes as we move forward in life.

For most freshmen, last week marked the first time they've seen their old friends (and for some, their parents) since leaving for college. College freshman Elena Stein said her first day home "felt really creepy," but by the second day "it was almost like Penn had never happened." She fell right back into her old routine.

"Penn still feels a little bit like summer camp," she said.

Not having a real house here adds to that feeling. "My dorm room is so tiny and not very cozy," she said (referring to Hill College House, of course), adding that, "once I have something like an apartment to come back to at Penn, I'll feel more like this is home."

However, she is starting to see Penn in a different light, noting, "I guess I kind of have two homes now."

Two years further along in the process, Wharton junior Mark Mbugua has solidified the feelings that Stein is only starting to form. "I definitely have two homes," he said. Being from Kenya, Mbugua only goes back once a year. When he's about to return to Penn, "I'll find myself saying, 'It's time to go home,' without thinking about it," he said with a laugh. "Kenya is still home, because I grew up there. But I live here now."

When I went back to San Diego, I found that my family has a whole routine that I'm not a part of. My 14-year-old brother now pretty much runs the show as an only child - not to mention that he's now taller than me, a fact I'm still struggling to get used to. I don't know where things are kept, how things are done or what life is like.

In short, I'm a guest.

I can only imagine this getting worse once I actually move out after graduation. First-year MBA student Nicole Desimone said she only likes to go back home "for short visits," never overstaying her welcome. "It's a pretty big adjustment going from living on your own to having to report to someone again," she said.

Well bad news, kids: Getting bossed around by your parents doesn't even change when you have a family of your own. Accounting professor Ayse Tuna said, "It's always as if you were 15 years old again - your parents try to tell you what to do." But she feels that it's a function of how well one gets along with them in the first place. Having always had a good relationship with her parents, Tuna said it's "normal" when she goes home.

This doesn't hold true for me. I've always been extremely close with my parents - I consider them two of my best friends. Yet I still feel like a visitor (and, at times, an unwelcome one) when I return home. I suppose, and hope, that this will change for me as I get older. Maybe, once I establish myself in a permanent home, visiting my parents won't be the hybrid sort of stay that it is now - I'm a guest, but technically I still live there.

I guess I'll have to wait and see if it ever gets better. For now, I'll just have to remember to make my reservations for the TV-watching schedule in advance.

Ali Jackson is a Wharton and College sophomore from Cardiff, Calif. Her e-mail address is jackson@dailypennsylvanian.com. All Talk and One Jackson appears on Mondays.

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