Welcome Home. Disturbing thought, isn’t it?
In a flurry of introductions and quick meetings, name and hometown are thrown out to hundreds of strangers. People are identified as being from somewhere else, whether that’s another country, another state or down the road. Home isn’t here; it’s supposed to be elsewhere. While our dorms are beautiful, they are not ours. While we and our parents have spent a small fortune on tuition, we are only temporary residents on this campus. And yet, welcome home.
Home is a habitual dwelling place, according to most dictionaries. Such simplistic definitions fail, however, to capture the feeling of “being home.” Students frequently sleep or eat in lecture halls and libraries, but few librarians or professors would call those spaces “homes.”
My friend Poshak Agrawal ’12 described the feeling of “home" accurately when he said, “Home is more than the building. Home is the feeling of absolute comfort felt in a building. Home is opposite work and stress. Home is peace.” Poshak is right. We think of home as a place of peace and comfort. The traditional image of the dwelling-home fails to capture such feelings.
I spent 12 years before Princeton in the same place. Having spent that many years on the same campus, at a school with a population of roughly 700, I could not help but feel at home there. I knew that campus in and out. I had at one time or another been taught in almost every building on campus. I had friends there, people I had known since first grade. I clearly identify with the area, since I call Windsor, U.K., my hometown.
My old school is an American school, embracing the American curriculum for decidedly non-British students. As is evidenced by my American accent, the school and its community had a greater impact on me than the rest of the area. As a school for foreigners, every year saw many come and many leave. Two years into college, with little time spent at home due to Princeton’s idiosyncratic break schedule, the chances to see the dwindling number of friends from high school are few. Home has become decidedly emptier.
Windsor and the surrounding area have not changed much throughout history. The biggest change in the town’s history was the moving of the town upriver to build a castle in the 11th century. The second and third largest changes were the introduction of the railway and the automobile. With the exception of the completion of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, the area has seen no noticeable changes during my time there. Clearly it is I who has changed, not the town.
As a geographical identifier, Windsor works. Windsor itself is a well-known tourist destination. The nearby towns of Slough, Staines, Ascot and Eton have been immortalized by the original "Office," Ali G, the horseraces and the famous school, respectively. The name Windsor paints an image with which many have a degree of familiarity, ensuring a smooth transition into meaningful conversation. A name gives a sense of what a place looks like, but it can never paint a true picture of the friends and family who make a place home. Even though I count Windsor as my hometown, the longer I stay at Princeton, the more Princeton’s community usurps that "home” feeling.
What I have been losing in my hometown, clearly the alumni found here. As the alumni can attest, one can leave Princeton’s campus, but one can never leave Princeton. According to Annual Giving’s website for last year’s gifts to Princeton, more than 70 percent of graduates from the classes of 2007, 2008 and 2009 gave donations, and 60.8 percent of all undergraduate alumni gave back. That giving is despite a weak economy. Annual Giving must be good at guilt-tripping alumni, but there must also be some other cause for their generosity to their alma mater.
Talk to alumni about their experiences at Princeton. A fair number of them will at some point or another bring up their college friends. Besides delicious food and good parties, eating clubs exist for the friendships. Besides the enjoyment of playing sports, teams stay together because of the friendships. The fraternities and sororities, the dance teams and theater productions, and so on and so forth, exist primarily for the friendships. There is a feeling of comfort from knowing those friends are there and being with them. It is a feeling of peace and comfort. It is a feeling very like Poshak’s description of home.
Hopefully all who are reading this have or are developing friendships on campus. And in small but powerful ways, our fellow Princetonians define our time here. Clearly we have our share of social divisions and differences of opinion, but the community we do manage to build binds us to this place. Princeton may not be our first, second or even sixth home, but it is a home nonetheless. So welcome home, Princeton.
Christopher Troein is an economics major from Windsor, UK. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.
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