Unit 2 paper

 Unit 2 paper

In Unit 1, the class was introduced to the idea of our individual communities. I wrote about my swimming community; having been a swimmer for the past fifteen years, I consider being a swimmer part of my identity. Though I chose to write about this specific community, my identity comprises different skills that I have learned in all the other communities I indulged in in my hometown. In my hometown are my family, friends, familiarity, and larger communities that shaped my identity. Growing up in Burlington, Vermont, is a community of itself and is why I am the way I am. However, I no longer live there; my home is now Syracuse, New York. Living is also a part of my identity, meaning it is my home. The difference is that Burlington is Familiar; it has all my memories and my childhood home, and Syracuse has nothing that has shaped my identity in the past. The tension is not between my two communities but somewhat internally because it's hard to call Syracuse my home. After all, my definition of home doesn't fit with living here in Syracuse. 

I define home as family, old friends, familiar people and environment, and living in my personal environment. Growing up in Burlington, Vermont, is very different than growing up somewhere like Los Angeles, California. Vermont is such a small state it feels like one big community, and we all have to live through similar things. This summer, when the valley of Vermont flooded, we all worked together to fix the damage. Every fall is Vermont appreciation month; everyone is apple picking, pumpkin picking, or hiking. Every winter, everyone fights through the terrible cold and celebrates the excellent snowfall together in the mountains. Then, when spring rolls around, everyone suffers through the awful weather. When that weather finally breaks, it's time for crimes on the waterfront! Everyone gathers for sunset almost every summer night on the waterfront, especially on the fourth of July. In Vermont, there are bike lanes everywhere and bike paths around. In Vermont, the whole community follows unspoken rules/traditions. I have yet to experience that sense of community in Syracuse, NY. 

Though I have yet to experience what being part of the Syracuse community means, I still call Syracuse home. Partially because I live here and see myself in the future, sticking with all the new and unfamiliar customs until I am fluent in my community at Syracuse. My home in the past was filled with memories and familiarity, and that's what I have always known as my home. The tension between Syracuse and Vermont stems from that definition of home. My current home is Syracuse. Syracuse doesn't hold memories like my hometown, but Syracuse provides me with my future.

I can remember the exact moment when I knew there was internal conflict. I drove down to Syracuse with my family the day before move-in; I was a little excited and nervous the whole drive down, but it wasn't anything more than jitters. As we tried to fall asleep in our hotel room, I thought about how last night was the last night I would spend in my own bed for what felt like forever, and I had taken it for granted. At that moment, I realized I was going to be dropped off at some random school with a bunch of random people in a city that I didn't know, and it is now supposed to be my home for the next four years? At that point, I only wanted to return home to my regular town with my familiar friends and keep being a high schooler. 

Through my first couple weeks here, I also just wanted to crawl back to the familiarity of Burlington. In Burlington, I had my favorite bagel places ( the dining hall has terrible bagels), I had the tiny little neighborhood that I had grown up in, and now I am living on a floor in a building, sharing a bathroom with a bunch of people I do not know. At home, I could just do a quick Target run to fill up on shampoo and conditioner, whereas here, I have to Uber or walk everywhere, making small tasks like that quite tricky. Life was a big adjustment, and accepting that this was my home was tough. It still feels strange because Syracuse is part of my identity. Burlington built that identity from the ground up, and being forced to move away and to a new town is a complicated feeling. 

The definition is home is where the tension is created. A home is a place of comfort, but what happens when I have a temporary home, like on vacation. This past April, I was in Sicily, and we were staying in an Airbnb. Whenever a person in my family got tired of walking around, they would say, “I want to go home,” every time I got caught off guard, my mind immediately went to my actual home. However, it was easier to call a temporary home because I knew I was returning to the comfort of my house. Here I am, never returning to permanently live in that house again. 

Almost every college freshman has experienced confusion or tension when first moving in. I researched to find people who can relate to this feeling, and I came across a blog about a girl talking about her experience moving in. She says, “Still nothing could prepare me for moving into college” ( p1). Moving away from your home is a significant change. Before I moved, people would ask me, "Are you excited? How do you feel about going to college? And I never had any idea how to answer that question. I couldn't mentally prepare for moving out of my home because I hadn't experienced anything like that before; literally, nothing could have prepared me for that experience. Going off of poor preparation, the blog talks about things she wished she had or really inconvenient things: “wish that there is stuff that I just do not have, like command hooks.” (p2). These aren't problems you run into at home; at home, I have access to this tool, or I have a more permanent version of those tools. On top of not having access to basic things now, you don't have your parents to run an errand; you have to rely on yourself to get things.

The sense of home is the tension that I am describing. However, home isn't a house or a room. It's more of a feeling. I found a blog titled HOME - A Feeling More than Just a Place. Room 194 in Flint Hall isn't my new home; Syracuse is. My house in Burlington wasn't just my home; Burlington was. Burling had my family and my friends; in this blog, the author says, “I am writing this as my heart feels heavy because I  am missing my loved ones being around.” Their loved ones were their home, not their physical place. Here at Syracuse, I don't have my original loved ones; my sisters aren't here, and my friends and parents aren't, so it felt weird calling Syracuse home.

Over time, and as I have developed relationships with my peers here at Syracuse, I have loved ones here, and I know I will form even more special connections with people here. Everyone has their own definition at home. In this blog, their definition of home is “Something that assures us with our being in this world, and it is what we live for.” (p1). This definition of home more accurately represents my definition as well. Again, my dorm room isn't my home; Syracuse is. As I spend time here, I am discovering more and more things about myself, like what I am passionate about in school and how I like to manage my time when it's up to me. I am passionate about being here, love what I am studying, and am forming excellent connections with people. That's what home is, so I call Syracuse my home. 

Home is also a big part of my identity, regardless of where that home is or who that home is with. Growing up in Burlington is why I am the person I am now. Whether that pertains to the environment, my family, or my friends. Syracuse is also a part of my identity. I am an SU student, which is part of my identity. Because identity is so important, I found a blog about what parts of your life helped shape different aspects of yourself. In this blog, she differentiates biography and identity, and she says, “Your identity, on the other hand, is what you wish to be and, therefore, become: smart, clever, courageous, kind, compassionate, funny, artistic, strong, wise” (p1). Burlington has shaped my courageous side. I love the outdoors because of Vermont, and my humor comes from the people I grew up with. All those aspects have been shaped by growing up in Burlington, but now that I live in Syracuse, I can change those to be the person I want to be. There are things in my future waiting for me to learn and grow from. In this blog, she also talks about childhood and how that shapes us today, but the future will shape us tomorrow. 

I am a part of two communities: my hometown, Burlington, Vt, and Syracuse, NY. Both of these places are home, but for two different reasons. Syracuse is my future, my goals and aspirations. Burlington is my past, my childhood, my familiarity. I have only ever lived in Vermont; it's the only home I know, so moving out and almost restarting was a challenge. It was hard to think that Syracuse was my home now, but as I spend more time here and grow connections and make memories, Syracuse is becoming part of my identity, and now I choose to call Syracuse home.

Relection.

To prepare for unit two, we did many mini-assignments to help us prepare for the final project. There were some specific assignments that I found myself continuously looking back at for help with my final paper. More recently, we did an assignment on how to write an essay. We learned skills on how to quickly break down your thoughts to orginize your essay better. With an extended essay like this, I found that helpful because I tend to stay off and talk about some irrelevant topics. I broke my paper down into around ten different topics, all of which I could branch off and elaborate on to tell my story. We also did an assignment called 60-second summary. Though I didn't use the same topic for my essay and summary, the exercise provided a more efficient way of describing my communities. Because we only had 60 seconds to give our listeners a complete summary of my community and what it means to me, I have those explanation skills when I need to communicate them back into my paper. In my paper, I pulled examples backing up my analysis from different articles. I found articles that talked about something similar to how I felt and pulled quotes from paragrams that best represented what I was trying to communicate with my audience.