Where you grew up and head back to in between college breaks is somewhere that strikes a chord inside of you. Whether you love or hate your specific town or city, you always have pieces of it with you in your daily life. After heading away for college, you start to notice differences in details of experiences, but the experiences still remain similar with your new friends. Here are 15 things that will always remind you of your hometown!
Whether you are a Kroger fanatic or Food Lion connoisseur, you have your allegiance to that store and will prefer to shop there. That local supermarket, you know it like that back of your hand, and if an outsider asked where the milk was, you would be able to draw them a detailed map of how to get. New supermarkets near your college may seem foreign and almost alien to you because your heart belongs to that one at home.
Depending on where you went to high school really shaped the “cool” spots to hang out during the weekend or after school. Some places had the mall close enough for you to hang out hours on end in the food court, or other schools had a local pizzeria that made business solely on your school going to it. When compared to your new friends at college, it seems they all have one major place that is “the place” was where a lot of your high school memories live.
To an outsider, your hometown and the towns around it are an absolute puzzle, a jumble of streets signs and unconnected road with the same name, but from years of living there and that amount of time you have driven on them, you know them so well. Your hometown is a breeze to drive and walk around but your college campus, on the other hand, is like walking through a maze.
The smells in your town hold such meaning to your life. It may be the scent of taking a walk through the deep pines during the late fall or the salty sea air that you smell in your hair after a day at the beach; those smells have such a bittersweet memory once you head to college.
The park where all of the sports game took place at, or that really awesome playground with the best slide (no questions asked). Though you don’t really go to the park anymore, when you pass by it, you always think of the memories that took place there.
Everyone in town knows that family that is the ideal perfect family. The family seems to be mini-celebrities and everyone knows exactly what’s going on in their lives. Once away at college those calls back home consist of learning new info about them, trying to keep update on their lives. (P.S. If you don’t know the famous family, you are that family).
This restaurant is family-owned and everyone in the town is always there. No matter what day of the week, or what time of day the restaurant will be packed with everyone in town. The food is great, and the atmosphere is one of the liveliest places in town, and while Commons is fun, it doesn’t compare to what you are used to at home.
Whether you believe it or not, you have an accent that is unique to you and your home. It could be that you lived really close to your college, or that you are in a whole other country. Don’t worry when people find your accent before you do, because it is a great conversation starter.
Inside jokes are those special jokes where you can say one word and the other person is already laughing. With people in your town, it seemed there is always that one or two topics that can send you and your neighbors reeling with laughter from it. Those jokes make your home unique, and you will find more in college just like it.
Whether town actually had historical monuments or not, some of the local amusements for tourists or houses that were haunted seemed to hold the same significance. You always walked faster past the haunted houses, or laugh at the people actually paying to go to your worn down amusement park, because this “monuments” were more than just a place to visit, they were jokes and memories coming through every time you saw them.
Even if you were the least active person in high school or the valedictorian, with three varsity sports, 7 presidencies on clubs, and worked 2 jobs, you knew the struggles of going to school with all these problems. Yes, these clubs maybe have caused anxiety and exhaustion, but they gave you such purpose and demand that college clubs do not match.
The summer is a majority of people’s favorite time of the year. Whether you are a beach town, an urban city full of people, or a small town in the middle of the forest, you have your summer traditions. People in college find their little groups and try and argue the best summer vacations spot, and your spot is superior to the others 100%.
It may have been your house or your best friends house, but everyone would hangout there no matter what. That house may have had the pool, a game room, or parents that were cool with whatever you guys were doing. It holds a lot of memories. In college, you’ll find a dorm that’s really similar where everyone hangs out, and it might even be your room if you are lucky!
Depending on where you head to college, you will meet a lot of people from all over the globe. When the hotter and colder seasons start to grow stronger, you will see that people tend to get an attitude of “my weather is worse than yours”. People from the north, like Buffalo, NY, will strut around boasting about how they can handle the cold better than anyone else, and people from Miami, FL will be boasting about that the humidity and heat are nothing to them.
Whether you live close to Washington D.C, New York City, or Los Angeles, everyone has the city that is close to them that they refer to as “the city”. When referencing your “city” at college, you suddenly have to start calling it by its real name compared to when you could casually reference it.
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