Oh, returning to “The U” and still being a freshman! The bottom of the pyramid, the lowest on the totem pole, the weak, the few, the fighting! Oh, the same old roommate and same old Chartwells; looking around and knowing it all by heart and almost being able to find your way around in the dark.
Many may say (or boom), “The thrill is gone!” And yeah, to most people it probably is, especially after such a nice, long, careless, routine-free break! I don’t think anybody wants to start a routine again, especially with so many still-lingering bad habits. It’s almost bad enough to walk into the dining hall as usual and tell any of the nice lunch ladies “Surprise me” when they ask you the usual “What are you having?” (Although maybe it’s not that bad. I take that back. You probably wouldn’t want any more surprises in your Charties.)
Funny thing is that most people don’t realize that part of this monotony implies a simple yet beautiful thing: UM is starting to feel like home, ladies and gentlemen – there’s no avoiding it. We come out of the same dorms and walk past the same lake every morning, and we go to the same buildings, face the same food options and probably even hang out with most of the same people. Maybe you don’t have your mom around to bake you a nice batch of cookies, but I still insist that this familiarity is the first seedling and sprout of feeling at home.
The thing about home, though, is that you’re never truly grateful about it until you have to leave it, and it’s probably going to be a while for us until we get to leave Miami. Are we going to make it worthwhile? The point is that we have to be grateful about it now and maybe even throw around some tokens of appreciation: being active, joining a student organization if we haven’t, or starring in the dorms’ upcoming Sports Fest. The beauty of it all is that in this second home, this time around we get to pick and make or break our family.
Irene Daboin is a freshman majoring in Psychology and possibly Sociology. She may be contacted at i.daboin@umiami.edu.