Maveah Griffith – April 8, 2026
Recently, I sat on my bed in my college dorm. My friend sat across from me, spooning up the raspberry sorbet we’d just gotten from the dining hall. To my left, hanging over my bed, is a collage of pictures of the people I hold closest to me.
As I lay here typing this, I look at those photos and smile. I’ve added to the photos I came here with. My heart feels full sitting in this room—the same room I was so unsure about back in August. I wasn’t necessarily scared to start college, just intimidated. But as August flew by and September came and went, I started to wonder if this place would ever feel like home.
It’s now April, and my first year of college ends in a month.
I want to leave you all with one of the biggest lessons college has taught me: Home is a subjective term.
It’s what you make it. Lately, I’ve been asking myself if Charlotte is still home, or if this campus is. The truth is, whenever I say I want to go home, I’m not even sure where that is anymore. Nobody warns you about the moment when your hometown starts to feel unfamiliar, but your college town doesn’t feel quite special enough to take its place.
Home isn’t a place, it’s your community. Home is the people special to you. Your family, friends, and those familiar faces that greet you with a warm smile on cold days.
Reflecting on my experiences in college over the months, I realize I’ve grown my own home here, my non-blood family. People come into your life for a reason, one of my favorite things to ponder on in my free time.
If I’d never forced myself to go to a random cookout my first week on campus, I’d never have met Manny, one of my closest friends. In the first two months of school when I’d cry over being homesick or feeling unsure over the future, Manny was always there. I knew he was homesick too, missing his sisters – which he’d often tell me I reminded him of. The truth of the matter is that we held each other through the tough transition from high school to a semi-adult life.
My sister’s best friend’s boyfriend’s sister just so happened to also pick NC A&T as her college choice. That’s a mouthful I know, but honestly so is Alana. She’s the talkative angel on my shoulder I never knew I was lacking. Even on my lowest days on this campus, I could always count on her to find some way to make me laugh.
Asha, who I met through a circumstantial encounter at a party I was never even supposed to go to, was one of the most surprising connections I’ve made. She just so happened to reappear in my life a few months later which is crazy considering we’d never met before the party and I genuinely never expected to see her again.
Nearly all of the close relationships I’ve garnered have happened in ways I least expected it. That’s often the beauty of life, and the beauty of not knowing.
I am so beyond grateful for the home that I’ve built here. Let this serve as a reminder, not only to whomever is reading, but to myself, that change will always be uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever.
Sometimes it grows into something more special than you expected.
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