At eight in the morning last Monday you could find me slightly off the west coast in the Pacific Ocean, waiting for a wave on one of my father’s Aussie surfboards. My papa is an AVID surfer, literally goes out every day, and I knew that the minute I got off the plane to begin my spring break back home in California, I would end up in the water. It was FLIPPING COLD but with a thick wetsuit on and the company of one’s very entertaining father, two hours flew by in a flurry of massive waves (okay, they were little but I get intimidated) and heaps of laughter, and I was loving being back in the surf and home on the west coast.
Needless to say, my spring break was pretty awesome. Most mornings would start with either a nice sleep in or an early morning surf, the afternoons would contain a vault practice with my high school team, and nights usually ended cuddled up with my family and kitties watching movies or reading into the wee hours of the morning—reading for fun, what a concept! Being home was exactly what I needed, a break from the hustle and bustle of college life and a moment to see how my family were doing.
To be honest, one of the few things that made choosing Tufts kind of hard was the idea of being so far away from my family. I knew that I wanted college to be the beginning of my own adventure and that would require moving out of the safety net that my parents provide (to an extent). But, being so far away was actually rather daunting for a while. When I went home for spring break, my brother, who is sixteen and 6’4” had grown another inch, I am sure (!), and has just started driving… madness, I know. It’s tricky being away from him because we have always been close and I love being in his life, and missing out on the tiny details kind of sucks. BUT, it has been a pretty cool experiment for us to see how we will correspond as adults. At nineteen and sixteen we are getting a glimpse into our future as siblings, because clearly we won’t live together forever and now is the time to still fight to be in one another’s lives.
As for my parents, I hate being away from them, but going home over the break reminded me that no matter where I live, they will ALWAYS love and support me, and rejoice when I come home, even if it’s just for a few days. That six-hour flight to see my folks is a difficult one, and if you are thinking about going to university out of state/on a different coast, I would really consider whether you can deal with that distance and the amount of travel it takes to get home. For me, it’s been fantastic, though a little tricky because I’ve really had to become independent and on those days when all I want is to be home and taken care of, I have to deal with those feelings and take care of myself… I feel like an adult, which is a first. I love being at home and I love being at school… it’s just the flight that I could do without.