Going home for Thanksgiving got me thinking about a lot of things. Living in Rhode Island, I don’t have a long way to go to be home. I could come home every weekend if I wanted to, and I had already been home several times during my first three months here at Boston University.

But there’s something different about Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s being home for almost a whole week, seeing my family and friends or just having time to relax without worries about schoolwork and things like that. Anyway, it got me thinking about my life before college and my life now.

I grew up in a small town that nobody outside of Rhode Island has ever heard of. So, coming to Boston was a big adjustment for me. Living in Rhode Island, you don’t get to experience a lot so even a 30-minute drive to Providence (the nearest city) was a day’s adventure for me. Providence is to cities like Taco Bell is to Mexican food — it’s not quite the real thing.

Rhode Island, for me, was like living in a bubble. It seemed like everything on the news was so far away, but we were safe within our borders. You can literally get to anywhere in the state in an hour. It was a nice place to grow up, but it was by no means the real world.

People in Rhode Island get excited about the tiniest bit of attention. We’ll proudly tout that we were the setting for Me, Myself ‘ Irene. I think the reason is because if we didn’t boast this accomplishment, people would forget about us. A lot of people already have. I can’t count how many times people thought that the state I was from was an island off the coast of New York.

Over the weekend, I went to the movies twice, once with my friends and once with my family. This was, for me, a good example of the differences between my new and old life. When I go to the movies in Boston, it’s always crowded, everything is grossly overpriced and it’s usually with a couple of kids from my floor or classes. At home, the theaters are basically empty. When I go with my friends, it’s always with a large group of people, all of whom know each other simply because we all grew up in the same town for 18 years. That feeling of familiarity is something that’s not present in my new life.

Living in the city was quite a new experience for me. I had been to Boston plenty of times, but never for much more than a day and not really by myself. Whenever I went to the city, seeing the architecture, the people, the sights and everything always made my heart skip a couple of beats. It just blew my mind that so many people could be crammed into this space and coexist.

Now I can look out the window and see the Charles River and the John Hancock Tower. One day, it just hit me — I was living in a city, on my own. I was outside the bubble. Everything I knew was back in Rhode Island and most of the people I knew were scattered in 50 different directions at 50 different schools.

It’s amazing how humans adapt to new situations. I mean, college is a complete 180. All of a sudden, there’s a lot of work, nothing is familiar and you’re stuck in a room that’s as big as some closets. High school didn’t prepare me for this.

I guess the thing that was most shocking to me was that I was okay. I don’t deal well with change and this was a big one. I had heard lots of stories of people who couldn’t handle it, who transferred after their first semester to some hidden school deep in a forest where they didn’t have to deal with the real world. But I was fine, and nobody was more surprised than me. After living in a small town and being pampered all my life, I came to the city and loved it.

But to be able to go back home and still be the same way with all your friends, to be able to see everyone and know nothing has changed — it’s really quite a phenomenon when you think about it. All my friends went through a major change in their lives, but we were able to pick up right where we left off. That’s the sign of true adaptability and true friendship.

It’s funny how in three months my dorm room feels like home and my old room feels like a hotel room. Yet this is where I grew up, and this is the place that I will always be able to come to and be welcomed with open arms. So when I leave Rhode Island and head back to college, I’m not sure if I’m leaving home or going home.

Justin Marble, a freshman in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].