I‘m sure I’m not the only UNC student whose friends seemed to be all over the place this summer. As for me, friends of mine were in NYC, New Orleans, Nashville and D.C., just to name a few. In July, I sweltered in Houston while I spent the rest of the summer traveling. Through it all, home felt very far away, and my friends felt even further. This summer made me realize how alienating time away from school can be for an undergrad.
Unless you’re some mastermind who somehow managed to score the Perfect (Paid) Internship in An Awesome City Where All Your Friends Also Were, you were probably like me, who somehow ended up somewhere she would have never anticipated: Texas.
Okay, so you probably weren’t also in Texas. Needless to say, when I arrived in Houston to work as a teaching assistant at an intensive program for high schoolers, I didn’t know any of my co-workers.
I felt far away from UNC. Sometimes this can be a good thing, but I was on a different university campus, so I really felt out of place and disoriented.
It was as if I landed on a high-tech planet where somehow the inhabitants could survive in extremely high temperatures and humidity, and I had only been provided the shabbiest of space suits. My friends were far away, in cool cities, eating good (read: not cafeteria) food and going to cool museums. Here I was, just hoping for an hour break in my schedule to go to the gym.
My feelings of alienation melted away when I found out another TA, Garrett, was from UNC. How in the world did two students from Chapel Hill end up in Houston? We bonded immediately over how much we love UNC and marveled at the fact we knew many of the same people yet had never met. Garrett changed the way the program went for me; he took me in and helped me feel at home even though we were far from it.
It turns out a lot of my friends found UNC at their faraway places, too. This started me thinking about how I’ll find UNC when I graduate in May. It’s hard to imagine being away from this campus, but it will be reality before I know it. I don’t plan on staying in town after I graduate.
No matter where I go, I know Chapel Hill will be with me. Hopefully there will be someone at the next destination to remind me that being Tar Heel born and bred doesn’t end when we take off that graduation robe.
Being a Tar Heel means finding a home with other people who love this place as much as you do even if you aren’t here.
