: With the academic year coming to a close, students living in hostels are heading home for the holidays. For most youngsters, home equals heaven, coming close on the heels of a hectic round of attendance, assignments, internships, project submissions and, most often, bad food. Life in a hostel can be tricky, beginning with a sense of dread and displacement, leaving one vulnerable and homesick. It can also be a dream come true offering youngsters independence, friends and fun, so as they settle into a groove, they find themselves enjoying their life away from home. But when home beckons, can anyone resist?
The reasons may be many, but food and pampering are terms synonymous with ‘home’. “The fact that I can relax, eat home cooked meals, and not worry about expenses is what I love most about being home. It is just the comforting feeling of being someplace safe and happy,’ gushes Surendra Dat, who studies at Christ University, Bengaluru.
Abhimanyu Mukherjee, a student of BITS Pilani Hyderabadtoo echoes the sentiment, but adds,“I get to spend time with my parents; I truly didn’t realise their worth until I actually went to college. Home is home and hostel can never replace it.” .
The summer vacation is the most awaited event of a student’s life, at home they need not worry about anything for the next two months. However, a couple of weeks into the vacation, teenagers are craving to go back to college. “I love home, don’t get me wrong, but I hate the loss of independence that comes with being home. When I’m at college I get to make my own decisions. It’s slightly smothering being under parental watch 24/7,” admits Nirmal Gopakumar, a Keralite studying in Bengaluru.
Another negative side to being home is the lethargy that sets in. “Unless I have something planned, my vacations are usually just a bunch of lazy days, where I sit at home and do absolutely nothing till the point where I’m counting down the days for college,” says Yash Agarwala, a student at Manipal Institute of technology.
Still, there’s no place like home, students admit. From suffering from the ‘I-want-home’ syndrome to ‘How-long-till-college’ syndrome, most students come full circle numerous times in their college life. Even after going back to college, the itch to be home never dies, so it’s safe to say that home is truly where the heart is.
