Would you look at me with a straight face and answer, "My dorm (or apartment)?"
Would you not even give my question a second thought before you began to tell me all the exciting details of your hometown?
Or, would you pause, think for a few moments, and tell me that you honestly just don't know?
As Thanksgiving break approaches, many of us are preparing for the long-awaited trek back to the home in which our parents live. Most students do not have the luxury of going home but once or twice a semester.
Therefore, the times when we do go home are marked by excitement, thoughts of relaxation, and possibly confusion.
Yes, confusion. You heard me correctly. Going home is a strange little phenomenon, wouldn't you agree?
As the years have passed, I have grown apart from my high school buddies. Now home represents time to spend with my family. Before I left for college, I never realized how important my family would become to me. I have a special relationship with both of my parents, my older brother and especially with my nine-year-old little brother.
When I first walk into my house during a break, it seems slightly foreign to me. I look around the house, inspecting everything as though I have been gone for years, not months.
I am amazed that there is actually food in the refrigerator, instead of the half-empty jar of salsa and Grey Poupon that has proudly remained in my fridge back at school. Then comes the moment of truth: going back to look at my bedroom. My room at home is a conglomeration of things that I have had since I was a little girl.
The pastel flowered wallpaper that was hung when I was 12 no longer reflects my eclectic 21-year- old taste.
Looking around my room, I realize that all of my necessary items are in my dorm room.
The shelves where I keep my CD player and television are empty, and my closet is bare. Suddenly I feel torn between two worlds: the world I used to live in and the world I left back at school.
During your college years you change and grow a lot from when you lived in your room during high school.
Some individuals have parents who moved after they graduated from high school. For these people it is an even stranger experience to stay in an unfamiliar house for a few weeks or months. But as we get older, we have to accept that our home is, well, not really ours anymore.
When your parents start gushing about the new couch in the family room and you start to feel like you have no say about anything in the house anymore, truth is, you really do not.
So what is the point of all of this "home talk?" The important thing to remember is that we have to appreciate that we can still call our parents' home our home. Most of us overlook the free laundry service, the delicious home-cooked meals, and the freedom to have the run of the house as a right we have as daughters and sons. And we do. For now.
But when we seniors graduate (and the rest of you as well), going home will no longer be the privilege that it is.
Oh, sure, do not get me wrong. You can always go home and live with your parents. A lot of people do.
But after you graduate from college, about a year after, if you are still chillin' out at home spooning off of your family, you will probably start to feel kind of lame.
The truth is that as we get older, we begin to appreciate our parents and our families a lot more. While friends come and go and jobs change left and right, our families are the only constant thing that we have in the world.
For some reason, when you are home, the food always tastes better, your clothes always look brighter and your dad can always fix whatever it is that you broke back at school. When we are at home, we can relax. We can step back from our busy lives at school and recharge.
So, as we all sit down with our families this Thanksgiving, let us remember that these moments we have as children at home for break are precious. We might have to endure long exchanges with boring relatives.
We might get annoyed by our parents' quirks. But the bottom line is that we have to accept our families. They are the only ones we have.