{"id":1028,"date":"2011-10-01T21:07:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T01:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2011-10-01T21:07:37","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T01:07:37","slug":"a-little-t-l-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2011\/10\/01\/a-little-t-l-c\/","title":{"rendered":"A little T.L.C."},"content":{"rendered":"

During my freshman year, I NEVER went home.\u00a0 I just loved Harvard too much.\u00a0 I remember the first time I went home was for Thanksgiving \u2013 a whole four days<\/em> \u2013 and it felt like the longest 5,760 minutes of my life (not that I was counting).\u00a0 I wanted to be \u201cback in the Pack\u201d (or my freshman dorm Pennypacker) in my amazing room with all of my friends, and I never wanted to leave.\u00a0 The five weeks of J-term seemed like five lifetimes (I returned to campus early to take cooking courses<\/a>), and by the time Spring Break rolled around, I was desperately looking for other options.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My dad and I at a Pittsburgh Penguins game during last Spring Break<\/p><\/div>\n

Now before you start thinking I have a terrible home life, I must assure you that nothing could be farther from the truth.\u00a0 I am the oldest of five children, and no one in the world gives me more love and acceptance and happiness than my parents and those kids.\u00a0 No matter what I am doing, I can always count on six fans that think I am the greatest thing since cooked meat.<\/p>\n

Which is probably why after a year of seeing my family only intermittently, I came home from Barcelona and realized, \u201cHey wait.\u00a0 I actually miss these people a lot.\u201d\u00a0 So when my mom called me a week ago and asked if I could fly home for a few days this weekend, my ready response was, \u201cum\u2026 YES!\u201d<\/p>\n

So here I am in Pittsburgh on a Saturday night playing homebody, and taking a break from studying for midterms to write to you guys.\u00a0 This morning, I was awoken by my two brothers jumping on me at the unnatural hour of 9:30 am, and I spent the majority of the day studying and catching up with my sisters.\u00a0 This time last year I would probably be crying and texting my friends back at Harvard wondering what I was missing and what crazy adventures they were up to.\u00a0 But right now, I don\u2019t even know where my phone is (oh great\u2026 24 hours at home, and I\u2019ve already lost my phone), and I feel just dandy having had a fantastic home cooked meal.<\/p>\n

When I left home for college a year ago, my greatest fear was not \u201cwill I be able to make friends?\u201d or \u201cwhat if the dining hall food is awful?\u201d or \u201cwhat if I come back to my dorm to find my roommates sticking a voodoo doll of me with a pin?\u201d\u00a0 My greatest fear was \u201cwhat if after I leave, I come home and find that I can no longer integrate myself into my family?\u00a0 What if my youngest brother who is 10 years younger than I am grows up feeling like I was never a part of his life?\u00a0 What will happen when my sister starts Middle School, or my other sister gets her license, or my brother loses his first tooth, and I\u2019m not there to be apart of it?\u201d\u00a0 Once I arrived at Harvard, I got so wrapped up in what I was doing, I momentarily forgot about these worries.<\/p>\n

The truth is all of these things do happen.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like my family has stopped functioning because I\u2019m not there \u2013 my sister still goes to school without me to drive her and my brothers still play hockey without me in the stands.\u00a0 But what I have learned is that it\u2019s not so hard to re-integrate yourself back into the family life.\u00a0 The time you spend with your family just becomes that much more valuable.<\/p>\n

Because life is so busy and exciting at Harvard, I don\u2019t know when I\u2019ll next be able to sneak away for a weekend at home (or if I\u2019ll want to). \u00a0But I have really enjoyed my weekend home (which is all I was going to write before I started going off about family this and family that, and this post got so long).<\/p>\n

Hope everyone else is having a great weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my freshman year, I NEVER went home.\u00a0 I just loved Harvard too much.\u00a0 I remember the first time I went home was for Thanksgiving \u2013 a whole four days \u2013 and it felt like the longest 5,760 minutes of my life (not that I was counting).\u00a0 I wanted to be \u201cback in the Pack\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29773],"tags":[37367,501,3477,6543],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kates-blog","tag-break","tag-family","tag-home","tag-pittsburgh"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1031,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions\/1031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}