My first year of college was an introduction to all things new. After living in a bubble of Southern California suburbs for eighteen years, I flew to New York City with the prospect of making Columbia University my home. I didn’t know anyone in NY, nor was I accustomed to the “New Yorker mentality” (turns out you shouldn’t smile at everyone on the street). I came to the other side of the country because I wanted change.

As soon as I moved into my John Jay room on floor 9, I stuck my head out of the window to stare at the street below me. The summer humidity flooded into my room while I took my first look at the street of honking taxis and speed walking New Yorkers (as cliché as it sounds). I didn’t want to take any part in this thing called the “Columbia Bubble,” where students barely left campus and focused solely on academics. I had already lived in the bubble of Thousand Oaks, and I didn’t want to get stuck in this one.

The subway system gave me my freedom. Within the first month, I had gone to all five boroughs and then some. After volunteering at a beach cleanup, I accidentally got a job with NYC H2O. I visited schools and reservoirs all over the city to teach aquatic ecology to second through twelfth graders. I took a van to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut to rock climb outdoors. I joined an intramural soccer team, the environmental biology society, and checked off as many tourist attractions as possible. I chased live music, museums, spent time outdoors, indoors, anywhere and everywhere. I found my place in the city, another home independent of everyone.

While I found myself in the city, every time I came back to campus I felt out of place. I had explored the city to burst the Columbia bubble, but in turn I neglected to spend time navigating my own campus. I wasn’t socializing with my peers, and I wasn’t reaching out to people I met like I usually would. Back in California, I was confident in who I was. I had lived there my entire life, surrounded by the same friends, family, and environment. I was defined by those abiding surroundings, but here, I didn’t know my place. I hesitated to reach out to others and always explored the city in solitude.

This isn’t something that magically got resolved in my first year of college. It took me almost the entirety of my first year to realize that while I had explored my own independence, I reached the point where I was even independent from the community on campus. Why didn’t I feel at home at Columbia? Why did I feel at home in the city alone?

I realized the definition of home because of some important people that shaped my first year of college. I had managed to find home within myself in a certain place, but along the way, I had forgotten that home is also within people. I was lucky to become close to a couple of people on campus that changed my perspective on the seemingly hostile environment at Columbia.

Yes, home is a place you should find in yourself. There is permanency within yourself that should be explored and understood. But you can’t do it all alone.