by Martholdy Pierre-Canel ‘21

I‘ve always been the person who usually had to ask her parents for permission to do things three business days beforehand and the one who could never sleep over because I was in a strict household. Surprisingly though, the girl who had to be home by midnight is soon to be crossing state lines and eventually border lines.

At this very moment I feel more curiosity and excitement than nervousness, but big changes like moving to college do not necessarily register completely until it’s time to actually move. I had spent my whole life here in Olney. My friends, family, and school are here. I’ll always remember being on three-hour-long facetimes with my friends looking for apartments at our dream locations, especially Boston. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, so I decided to apply to Boston University. Fast forward some months to me opening my decision letter in the church parking lot (there is something spiritual about that but that is a talk for another time) and I was welcomed with red and white confetti and the word “Congratulations!” printed in big bold letters to spend one semester in Boston and one semester in London.  

I was overly excited for a new change. I was running on a senioritis high watching every dorm tour, dorm review, day in the life, etc. practically anything that YouTube showed me. I was convinced that I was ready to press the commit button until the time came when I actually had to do it. Given the approval by my parents to move, my heart sank and my entire childhood had flashed before my eyes. At home, if something had ever gone wrong my family was always in a close vicinity and at the end of the day, I could always come home. My friends had been my friends since middle school or the beginning of high school; I had already gone past that “getting to know them” stage and had already picked who to keep in my close circle. Moving 427.7 miles to Boston is a restart button. It was like I had reverted back to kindergarten, knowing no one and knowing nothing about the new world I was entering. Boston is a tapestry made of different cultures and it has left me wondering since I was accepted if it’d change me for the worse or for the better. Change and independence, though, is vital to growing as an adult. Learning about yourself, your fears, your likes and dislikes, and how you act in certain situations is bound to happen and now just happens to be our time, like kindergarten. In the same way I conquered that foreign feeling of a new environment, even if it was only elementary school, I am tasked with the same inevitable endeavor that I too will conquer again. So yes, homesickness is inevitable but who says Boston can’t be home too?