As the end of the semester approaches, students studying abroad will soon return home, embracing a new world outlook and sense of self. As our friends return, a whole cohort of students, including myself, are leaving to embark on their own semester of adventure. While I count down the days until I leave, I find myself reflecting on the concept of home.

Thanksgiving and winter break are swiftly approaching, which means I will soon be sleeping in my childhood bedroom turned storage room, pretending like everything is how it used to be before I left for college. Unfortunately, while I love going home to see family, it simply no longer feels like a home that truly belongs to me because I have made my own home at school.

Coming to Trinity as a first-year, one of the biggest challenges is leaving our hometowns and forging a new sense of home. We decorate our dorms, surround ourselves with new friends and join campus clubs and organizations. In doing so, home is no longer defined as the house where we live with our family, but a space that we create and manicure for ourselves, purposefully choosing who and what we surround ourselves with.

It takes time for students to settle in at Trinity and find our niches where we feel a sense of belonging. Eventually, we become comfortable with campus, and the feeling of home extends past our dorm rooms and friend groups to our favorite campus spots, whether they be in the library, the gym or a lawn.

Day by day, as we lay down our roots at Trinity, it becomes harder and harder to think about leaving. While it’s a blessing to have the opportunity to study abroad, it’s hard to leave the home I have created, knowing it will not be the same when I return. When we come back home to Trinity after spring semester, we won’t be returning to the same dorm room we left, friend groups will have shifted and our senior friends will be gone and graduated, ready to begin their adult lives.

The end of every semester is a reminder that even as we are busy with our exciting adventures, whether abroad or not, time still passes. Every so often, when we pick our heads up from our books and laptop screens, we notice campus — our home — has changed and continues to change. Even though change is uncomfortable, it is also inevitable. We may not return to the same campus we left, but we will continue to create spaces to call home.