“I think I love this place.”
The first text message I ever sent from Pennsylvania. Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025, 9:30 p.m. I was holed up at the Hampton Inn in Media, fresh out of a shower that had washed away all the sweat and grime from four frantic hours packing up the last of my things over a thousand miles away, two hours of driving in a torrential downpour, three hours combined at airports and in the sky, and three more hours of driving — during a clear evening, this time — through Philadelphia, Media, and finally Swarthmore itself. It all happened so fast.
I’ve always felt there’s something inherently difficult about rationalizing the sheer speed and scale of air travel, fundamentally. That morning, I woke up in the same bed I had woken up in for almost a year, and in less time than the span of an average day of high school (a measure of time I have become intimately familiar with keeping track of over the past four years) I had been transported to a place that felt far enough as to be an entirely different world. Far away from friends, family, comforts, memories … my favorite cat. I was handling the distance from some of those better than others. So many days spent feeling entirely stuck in those seven to eight hours, that I could’ve instead spent travelling to different worlds. My eyes trailed over to the clothes I had worn that day and had yet to find a place for in my rush to feel comfortable. I could’ve sworn I saw the lamplight catch a strand of dark tabby cat hair still stuck to it. I quickly looked back at my phone.
“I think I love this place.”
I had sent the message to one of my closest friends. We were lucky enough to both get accepted into Swarthmore, two of only three students in our graduating class to attend college out-of-state. I wasn’t totally alone. Before her acceptance, I thought I wanted to make a clean break from everything I had ever known and become someone entirely new. Something I could like. Nine months later, and I don’t think I would’ve made it through orientation week without her here.
I turned around in that same swivel chair that they seem to have in every room in a Hampton Inn and towards my dinner. Olive Garden takeout — a pasta bowl and garlic breadsticks bag. I don’t come from a family or place with any kind of rich culinary tradition, but this was as good a heavy comfort meal as I could ask for to forcefully suppress that bittersweet feeling of homesickness starting to worm its way into my stomach.
Before I had fully learned shame, I once walked an hour to get to the location in Port Charlotte to sit down and eat … alone. I was determined, at the very least. Not only did I have to cross the interstate, but there weren’t even sidewalks for half of the journey. It would’ve been a ten-minute drive. I would like to say I never tried anything like that again, but in my sophomore year of high school, I did walk home along that same interstate for three hours because I was afraid to ask anyone for a ride. I often felt stuck, trapped, and isolated for a lot of reasons growing up, and living in such an unwalkable area certainly didn’t help.
But Philadelphia’s not like that. Swarthmore’s not like that. It’s one of the first things I noticed after I landed, and one of the things I have been most excited about: you can just go places, do stuff, and get what you need on your own. Whether it’s walking to the CO-OP for emergency groceries, riding the bus for five minutes to Target, or taking the train for a day in the city. I haven’t actually ventured into Philadelphia yet. I continually remind myself that I really need to. One of these days.
“I think I love this place.”
When people here have asked me, “Where are you from?” I’ve just been responding, “Southwest Florida. Do you know Sarasota?” even though Sarasota is a whole hour north of Port Charlotte. The latter is not even a town — just a “census-designated place.” Feeling connected, much less proud, of where you’re from isn’t always easy, especially when every second person you meet is from New York or Shanghai or Philadelphia itself. Especially when you don’t even think you want to feel proud of where you come from. Some part of you wishes you could forget it entirely.
But everyone here is so nice and completely different from what I’m used to. At first I had caught myself worrying that maybe it was just the combined awkwardness and anxiety of orientation making everyone pull their punches and reserve their judgements, at least outwardly. But either everyone has done an Oscar-worthy job of putting up a month-long front, or people here actually might … care? At least, they try to. So much has happened in this past month for us incoming first years, and upperclassmen and faculty are undoubtedly dealing with their own issues that come with starting a new semester. Still, it somehow feels like most people are making an active effort to listen when you talk and go out of their way to help when needed. I haven’t been nearly as proactive about putting myself out there as I originally was hoping I could be, and I’ve already made several frankly embarrassing slip-ups. But despite what old nagging fears I have, I have hope that I can be more open and vulnerable here than I ever could before.
“I think I love this place.”
I grew up in Florida for most of my life, but I wasn’t born there. Until I was eight, I had lived in southern Maryland, and was probably a different person entirely. Maybe not a better person, but sometimes during that period of moving, there was a shift. I was confident, actually more sporty than academic, and honestly kind of annoying. How much of the change that was truly due to the sudden move, or, what’s honestly more likely, due to the natural process of maturation, is hard to say, but I can’t help but feel strange when I look back on that version of myself. I was social and active, going outside to play with all the neighborhood kids in this perfect little cul-de-sac, blissfully unaware of financial stress or political divides that would come to weigh on me. And then I moved. Suddenly, there was no more cul-de-sac — just a street, no sidewalk. No neighborhood kids I wanted to play with. The tile floor had replaced hardwood and carpet. Constant heat and terrifying summer hurricanes replaced falling leaves and snow days. Hopefully, this year I’ll get to see those last two again.
When Hurricane Milton swept across the Florida peninsula just last year, the saltwater spray it carried from the Gulf of Mexico killed just about every tree in the southwest Florida area for months after the storm had dissipated. One day, when I was walking into class, I stepped into a pile of dead, brown leaves practically stripped from their branches. It was November, and I couldn’t help but laugh to myself about how this felt like the first true “fall” I had experienced in almost ten years, enhanced by the cool, dry air left behind after the storm had sucked the humidity from the region for weeks. I can’t help but also think about how, while hiding from extended family across the state weeks earlier, when the storm was going through, I was frantically finishing the same application that would get me accepted into Swarthmore. My intended major is English literature, and I’ve always wanted to be a writer, so I find a lot of joy in how real life sometimes deals out situational irony and poignant symbolism.
“I think I love this place.”
Maybe I was over-romanticizing things a bit, but I wanted to think of coming to Swarthmore, to Pennsylvania, to the Northeast, as some kind of homecoming. This is where I was born — perhaps I could uncover some kind of deeper truth to myself and my own life that had been buried in the past decade, washed away by the raging southern storms of puberty, high school, and the ways in which the world has changed since 2015. Of course, I haven’t found anything like that. I still feel like myself, with all of the hangups I’ve accrued about that. It’s been over a week since the autumn equinox, but it doesn’t feel like it yet. It’s been rainy and humid, and the leaves still seem rather green to me. If I didn’t know any better, some days I can almost forget that I’m not still in Port Charlotte. In a lot of ways, I am. As much as I wished I didn’t have to, I carried all of my baggage from there, literal and metaphorical, good and bad, on that plane with me as I left from Tampa. I’m sure some of my clothing still has cat hair on it. I brought my high school yearbook with me after going all summer without reading a single message in it from close friends, teachers, and people I’ll probably never see again, and I continually remind myself that I need to. One of these days.
On Sunday, Aug, 24, 2025, 9:30 p.m., I thought I loved this place. I don’t think I did, and I don’t think I do now over a month later — at least, not yet. I wanted to love this place, I still do, and I still think I will sooner, rather than later. But I also think that the often superficial nature of love at first sight can apply to places as well as people. One day, maybe after I’ve been to Philly, after I’ve walked through Crum Woods, after many days of morning classes and afternoon clubs and late night labs with, hopefully, a lot of that time with people I can genuinely call friends, I’ll text my friend again — even though I had probably seen her all day.
“I love this place.”
