Jessai Flores

Home is in those morning sips of coffee — the kind that tastes just right because you’ve been making it the same way for years. The way your mom always says she doesn’t need coffee but still steals a sip of yours anyway. The way you used to make a second cup just to procrastinate leaving the house.

Home is in “Silver Springs” playing through a crackly car speaker while you and your mom scream the lyrics in the car to the grocery store. In the way you always went in for one thing and left with five because you were both easily distracted. In the way you knew exactly what aisles had the best snacks, the best lighting, the best people-watching opportunities.

Home is in the deep, unspoken conversations you had with childhood friends in dimly lit basements, the ones where you spilled your soul over lukewarm drinks and stale chips. The ones where someone confessed something big — some fear, some dream, some ridiculous story that somehow meant everything — and no one ever brought it up again, but everyone remembers.

And then, suddenly, home is gone. Not gone gone, but too far to touch, too distant to feel in the same way. And now, you’re at Yale, in a dorm that smells vaguely of someone else’s laundry detergent and a dining hall where the coffee tastes like regret. The only Fleetwood Mac you hear is blasting from a Bluetooth speaker at a party where people pretend to know the lyrics but only mumble through the verses. And the basements? They’re louder now, stickier, and somehow filled with people you don’t know but are expected to act like you do.

Home is hard to find at Yale.

At first, it feels like you’re grasping for it — reaching out to call your mom when you’re walking back from class because that’s the only time you have. Texting old friends in a desperate attempt to keep the thread alive, even as responses get slower and conversations turn into sporadic check-ins. You try to recreate it, maybe by making your coffee exactly the way you always have, only to find it tastes different here. Maybe it’s the water. Maybe it’s the stress. Maybe it’s because home wasn’t just the coffee — it was who you shared it with.

But then, slowly, something shifts.

You find home in the boy who shares your oddly specific music taste — sending you recs you didn’t know you needed, the kind that makes you pause everything and just listen.

You find it in the girl you have late-night conversations with — the ones that start with casual complaining about assignments but somehow spiral into thoughts about life and love.

You find it in the dining hall meals that aren’t just about eating, but about lingering. The ones where no one is checking the time, where someone says, “Wait, one more thing,” and suddenly, another hour has passed.

You find it in the quiet, stupid little moments — the ones that don’t seem like much until later, when you realize they meant everything. The way your friend instinctively gives you their pickles off their sandwich because they hate them but know you love them. The way your friend sends a “text me when you get home” text without even thinking about it. The way you start associating certain songs, certain places, certain inside jokes with the people here, the ones who are becoming your new version of home.

Because the truth is, you don’t recreate home at Yale. You find it. In pieces, in glimpses, in people you didn’t expect and moments you didn’t plan for. You stitch together a new version of it, one that looks different but feels just as real.

And maybe that’s the secret to staying sane here — not holding onto the past so tightly that you miss the present. Not thinking of home as a place you left behind, but as something you carry with you and build anew.

So yeah, Yale is overwhelming. It’s fast and chaotic and sometimes unbearably loud. But home? Home is still here. You just have to know where to look.