There's a certain comfort you feel upon returning to a place you once called home.
Everything has a familiar quality about it. You know where everything is, how everything looks, smells, sounds, and feels. But what makes something feel like home isn't just how it looks or the fact that you spent a long time in that physical place. There's more to it than that.
It's the way you know the exact path to take, the exact place to go the moment you arrive.
It's the familiarity of the gray clouds filling the sky that so often threatened to pour rain down upon you while walking to class.
It's the momentary confusion followed by the squeals of delight and excited hugs upon seeing old friends.
It's the hours-long conversations filled with giggles, inside jokes, memories, and more.
It's the joy of sitting in your old advisor's office, telling him how you're doing and what you've accomplished since you graduated and seeing the pride on his face.
It's the kick you get when you realize that only those who know you know that you graduated almost two years ago and you "don't belong here" anymore.
It's the comfort of walking down the halls of your old academic buildings, remembering all the wonderful lessons your learned during your years as a student.
It's the way you know that even though you don't technically belong anymore, even though you aren't a student and haven't been for almost two years, even though a lot has changed since you left, despite all of this, it's still your home. It always will be, in some way, even 50 years from now.
No matter how it changes, no matter how you change, a part of you will always call it home.
That's why I love my alma mater. Once a Captain, always a Captain.
Where do you feel home away from home? What is it about that place that makes it feel like "home"?
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The post Once a Captain... appeared first on Shades of Shayes.
