Illustration by Joaquin Kunkel/The Gazelle

The very first time my mother visited campus during Marhaba week, she stepped out of the taxi, looked around for a few seconds and then immediately turned to me and said, “Supriya, please don’t fall into the water fountains.”

I think that’s when it hit me — the fact that this was not home. At home, I’d learned to battle the perils of suburban high-rises such as poor cellphone reception and pigeons. Here, the dangers of the land were alien to me. Water channels lurking around every corner. Feline beasts that prowl the night. Higher education. Would I be able to wholeheartedly embrace the Island as my place of permanent residence for the next four years?

I couldn’t. I must confess that for most of the first semester, I played a convincing E.T.; hardly a day went by when I didn’t point to the sky with a gnarled finger and sadly grunt, “Home.” I spoke about home, I thought about home, I rapped about home, I mimed about home, I made home-shaped origami. I had this nagging feeling that I was somehow cheating on Home with College, my demanding mistress.

So last December, when I returned home for winter break, I was ready to throw myself back into the open arms of my beloved Home. I couldn’t wait to burst into my own room, to sleep in my own bed, to trip and fall over my own belongings. Everything would be the same again.

But it wasn’t.

The first thing I did when I entered my house — ah, home sweet home — was walk straight into the kitchen to get myself some water. I was filling a glass with water from the tap, when suddenly, my mother ran towards me in slow motion, and with a flourish, knocked the glass out of my hand. Horrified, I looked down at my trembling, empty palms. I had almost drunk tap water in a city where E. coli is your friendly neighborhood bacteria.

I could have died. My house had tried to kill me.

And it wasn’t just the house that had changed. I had changed too. In a mere four months at university, I had acquired more knowledge than I had in 10 years at school. I had done my own laundry. I had made my own bed. I had tied my own shoelaces. I had experienced all that life had to offer me and I was now an old soul, on par with Morgan Freeman and Stephen Hawking. I could spew philosophy at will and I could recite the multiplication tables of 17. Indeed, my post-semester sagacity and brilliance knew no bounds.

The problem, however, was that I didn’t exactly know what to do with all my sagacity and brilliance. Within a day, I was propelled from the heights of workaholism to the depths of fatigue and boredom. All I did for two weeks was mope around the house quoting Immanuel Kant and occasionally, Descartes. “If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on,” I sighed as I lay sprawled across the carpeted floor. “Everything is self-evident,” I responded exasperatedly when my mother asked me why I was sprawled across the carpeted floor. “Sorry, mommy,” I whimpered when my mother yelled at me for sassing her.

Other things had changed as well. On my second day back home, I saw a particularly good-looking young man in the elevator. “Oolala,” I thought to myself. My mother saw me staring and she told me conspiratorially, “Do you remember when you saved him from choking on his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?” I was thoroughly confused for a minute and then I realized that I had attended his Pokémon-themed 12th birthday party six months ago. In the brief time that I was gone, the little boy that I left behind had become a man. I felt like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar. They grow up so fast; it’s ridiculous.

Speaking of growing up ridiculously fast, it turns out that I had succumbed to this terrible habit as well. After many late nights at college, I had grown used to going to bed at 1 a.m. – which isn’t so bad, all things considered. But in my parents’ eyes, it was almost as if I was trafficking animals. In staying up past my bedtime, I had transformed from being their innocent little girl to being a punk-rocking teenage rebel pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Psychology.

Then there was my family. I’d missed them terribly, but having my parents around all the time after four months of nothing but dropped Skype calls was different too. Eventually, driven to a state of madness by boredom and exhaustion, I started giving my family roles to play. My mother was ADNH Compass and Serco. My father was Public Safety. My brother was the campus cat. Often, when my mother would serve me dinner, I would instinctively say, “Meal swipe, please.”

Sometimes, I would pet my brother.

It was strange. Throughout my first semester at college, all I wanted to do was return to home. And now that I was here, I found that the first-semester-hangover had come back with me and, for the first time ever, I was comparing home with something else. Along with this came the realization that whenever I would go home, I would be going home on a vacation — ranging from a mere two weeks to three months at a stretch. And so, despite my inability to consciously think of College as Home, she had gradually made her way into my heart, thanks to her beautiful campus, her stellar educational facilities and, most importantly, her smoothie bar.

When I returned to college two weeks later, everything was the same. The same feline beasts, the same channels. It was comforting. I think that eventually, College might accept me and I might accept her. I have hope for our future together, infinite hope that stems from one single fact:

I haven’t fallen into a water fountain. Yet.