My first perception was that this room did not belong to me. It had been taken over by some invisible neat freak without personality. All my favorite possessions, my bulletin board, my posters, even my teddy bear, were all at school, my surrogate home. I had never packed to go home before or lived out of a suitcase while staying in my own room.
The first night of culture shock, I decided to go straight to bed, scared that if I stayed up any longer, my family might forget me, just as my room had. Unaccustomed to the forgotten height of my bed, I nearly injured myself jumping into stiff sheets. Oddly enough, I wished I was snuggling instead in the soft, jersey sheets of my comfortable single at school.
Lying in the dark, I began to be frightened of the space I could not see. I longed for the compactness of my room at school, where I can open the door, operate the TV, and survey my closet without getting out of bed. Now, I had to worry about all the windows in my room, sans blinds, and about the suburban wildlife lurking outside the windows watching me. My one window at school is at least protected by a tree.
I slept for fourteen hours, waking up puffy- eyed and completely disoriented. School could have been across the country, despite the fact that it was merely an hour and a half away. Having countered the "home front," I now had to face the dilemma of catching up with my high school friends. If sleeping in my bed bothered me so much, how was I going to handle meeting the people I had spent the past four years with?
We all decided to meet on Monday at our favorite ice cream place to share pictures and stories. Note that I disliked these kinds of confrontations in the past; now that I had to face one myself, I began to fully understand why my parents dreaded reunions. I could see it: everyone would get together, decked out in their new and improved college personas, wearing their sophisticated intellectual looks, arguing about whose experience was more worthwhile-yeah, something to look forward to.
From outside the ice cream shop, I could see all my old buddies assembled around a table, crouched over photos and some mint chip ice cream. Warily, I entered, greeted by hugs and familiar voices. Until that point, I had not entertained the thought of what it was like attending another school, yet as my friends relayed stories of casino nights and seminar classes of two hundred students, I found myself imagining what it would be like in their shoes. We showed each other pictures and told each other embellished stories of cute football guys and halloween parties, which, not surprisingly, turned into a game of name-dropping.
After a while, I began to realize that, although my sister had taken over my side of the closet and replaced my name with hers on the answering machine, I was still the same Lauren that had graduated with the Class of 2000-along with the rest of my friends. I forgot about the need to impress them with stories of Triangle TAP and ice luges, but remembered, instead, they already knew who I was.
My next step toward assimilation into the "old society," was to visit my high school. I arrived between seventh and eighth period, grateful that the days of ringing bells and waking up at 6:30 were over. Driving through Center Street, I dodged the annoying students who didn't cross at the crosswalk, cursed at those who didn't wave to thank me for stopping, and then realized that I, myself, had been one of them less than a year ago.
After parking, I walked up through the campus, through the quad where I had studied and tanned myself during my senior spring, and wondered if anyone would recognize me. Some of the underclassman did double-takes, probably wondering if it was truly me, the "legend," or my younger sister, the sophomore. Finally, out of the window, I heard someone scream my name, only to find out she was my sister's loud-mouth friend. Then, for a second, it was I who did a double-take, wondering why she was in the sophomore homeroom. It occurred to me then that I wasn't the only one who had made a transition.
I went from classroom to classroom, hunting down my favorite teachers, who, when found, made me feel old and beyond their help. I had merely graduated five months ago, but the thought that I was beyond my teachers' grades and criticisms both elevated and distanced me, trivializing my high school experience.
What sounds like an identity crisis merely describes my first real trip home from college. It took seeing the environment I came from to realize how much freedom I had gained. But don't fret, while on this liberty joyride, my parents didn't forget to assert their power, as they turned "As long as you live under my roof" into "As long as we pay your bills." I'll be indebted to them for quite some time.
I wasn't prepared for the rules and attention that I had lived without at school. No one at school was worried or concerned if I came home after midnight; no one questioned my every move, or needed to know my exact destination and time of departure and arrival. My parents' attitude toward me had not changed-I was still their first-born and still their responsibility; my friends regarded me in the same light, we shared the same jokes and memories; my teachers were unchanged. If all the people that had influenced my 18 years were the same, what about returning home made me feel so different?
Perhaps my changed emotions were a result of my independent life in which none of them could partake. They weren't involved in my new college experience that was completely separate and distanced from my past. None of them could understand, no matter in how much detail I described my situation, what it was like in my shoes. I don't necessarily like to look at myself as changed; rather, I see myself as having added a second dimension to my life that defines as well as isolates me from past relationships.
Lauren Sozio is a member of the Class of 2004.