My Preview counselor did a great job of laying out a roadmap for being a UF student. She told me about what college will be like going forward: how I’d build a work ethic and collegiate-level study habits, find a group of friends that I’d keep for a lifetime and develop myself professionally and spiritually. Preview readies you for changes you’ll see to your student persona. What it can never prepare you for is seeing your hometown change right out from underneath you.
There are two equally important roots to the word “hometown.” Changes in “town” are gargantuan and conspicuous. They soak up taxpayer dollars and are voted on by committees. Changes at “home” can be more disarming. You might come home to a dog that’s slower than he was over Spring Break, that struggles to get up to greet you and wags a bit more meekly although you love each other just the same. They didn’t tell you about this part at Preview. Most of the improvements are good despite some of the sad ones. Your parents may have turned your room into a storage closet or a home gym depending on their activity levels. Your living room might have gotten a new paint job, and there may be a different car in the driveway.
It happens to every one of our hometowns, but Miami is the only one I can speak for personally. After spending months in sleepy Gainesville, the shock of being dunked back into a flurry of high-rises and freeways can be disorienting. The jolt is exacerbated by the constant construction on the once-familiar drive home. There are exit ramps to places that didn’t exist when I drove past them in August. The skyline is home to at least two new skyscrapers that seem to have sprouted overnight. You’ll have to adjust to their suspicious twin outlines projected against that familiar off-white overcast Miami-summer sky. Being away for school, you only get strobe-light glimpses at how your town is evolving. You begin to feel like a visitor in your old stomping grounds.
Coming back, I found myself marveling at mundane things. A city bus took my breath away the other day. I was dumbstruck by the repaving of a popular street in Coral Gables. I got on the train and had to double-take at the electronic advertising space inside the car. Where once there were dingy posters, there are now bright, animated squares of color. These are improvements, but you can’t help but feel like they are a bit alien.
I had another epiphany standing on a street corner in downtown Miami as I was trying to find my way home for the day. I was staring into a large fresh pane of black glass that still crackled at the edges with blue painter’s tape. There was newness and hustle and bustle all around me. But in that moment, I was struck by my own reflection in the glass. I had changed just as much as Miami had in the last 10 months. For every change I could see in the buildings and streets there were just as many in my head and in my heart.
When you do go back to your old city, town or municipality of some sort, try not to be unsettled by developments around you. The most important changes are happening within you — a place you will always be able to call home.
Stephan Chamberlin is a UF political science junior. His column comes out Tuesday and Thursday.
