{"id":116,"date":"2026-01-02T14:59:53","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/?p=116"},"modified":"2026-01-02T14:59:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:59:53","slug":"a-virginia-voyage-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/2026\/01\/02\/a-virginia-voyage-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A Virginia Voyage Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t really blog in December because I kept waiting for something climactic to happen after completing my first semester of college. My friends and I did celebrate with Insomnia Cookies, but there wasn\u2019t any big punctuating event to end what I thought was a major milestone\u2013only some aggressive Iowan winds, a final few essays, and an hour-long exam.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose the most significant feature of my December was my journey to get home for the holidays. A flight from Iowa to Washington, D.C. is only a couple of hours, but I wanted to avoid the price and mental anguish of airport travel. Fortunately, I have a friend who drives from Iowa City to Ohio every school break, and he was willing to let me conquer the passenger side of his car. All we had to do was survive frustrating Chicago traffic and surrender an hour to the time zone barrier. From Ohio, my parents picked me up and drove me back to our hometown.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t been home since I originally moved onto campus last August, and it\u2019s honestly been a bit surreal being back. Every street and building is viewed through a lens of distant, bittersweet nostalgia: I\u2019m not used to seeing these familiar sights in the context that they\u2019re not really my permanent \u201chome\u201d anymore. I feel like the part of me who knew this area so well\u2013the part tied to my childhood and teenage years\u2013now exists mostly just in the past, vaguely dulled by the very beginning of a new life in Iowa. So many places here prompt a memory that can never be replicated or continued ever again; they\u2019re unreachable. This feeling, which I\u2019m sure will only grow more prominent as time goes on, was what I was terrified of after graduation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was worried that I\u2019d lose my \u201chome\u201d in Virginia, especially if Iowa City didn\u2019t start to feel like \u201chome\u201d right away, either. But this is not necessarily something to resist. Part of the early college experience is to say goodbye to childhood and welcome new possibilities, to grow as a person as you grow up. I can\u2019t deny the ache I feel when I\u2019m reminded of an old friend whose family doesn\u2019t live here anymore, nor the pain of reuniting with my familiar bedroom while knowing I\u2019ll have to leave it again in only a couple of weeks. But I <\/span>can <\/span><\/i>enjoy reminiscing about the past without letting it stop me from being excited about the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe I don\u2019t really need a big punctuating or climactic event, after all. I think what I really just needed was the simplicity of relaxing at home and remembering what it meant\u2013and still means\u2013to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Until next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t really blog in December because I kept waiting for something climactic to happen after completing my first semester of college. My friends and I did celebrate with Insomnia Cookies, but there wasn\u2019t any big punctuating event to end what I thought was a major milestone\u2013only some aggressive Iowan winds, a final few essays, and an hour-long exam.\u00a0 I suppose the most significant feature of my December was my journey to get home for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/emily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}