Who am I, and where do I belong? As college students, we bounce back and forth between home and school, but most of us won't be living at either of those places in a couple of years. We'll be creating new lives for ourselves, working in places we did not expect to be in, adjusting to the rhythm of life in other places with other people.
And college is a unique time when this autonomy becomes most apparent. It is a four-year period that is sandwiched between an 18-year period of living with family and post-college life, which generally involves an eventual settling down with a job, life partner and family. College is the transition space between those two worlds, but it is also a world unto itself. It is the time in our lives when we are the most free to not belong – to not completely belong to anything or anyone or any place, but to ourselves and the blossoming independence of our identities.