Knowing that Cambridge was so far from home, I remember how anxious I started to feel as the summer ended, and my first-year move-in date approached.
I had never visited the East Coast prior to visiting Harvard during Visitas (our admitted student's day), but that visit confirmed that Cambridge, MA was very different from Richmond, CA. I was worried that because Boston was so different from where I grew up, I would always feel homesick and like a piece of me was missing. I knew that I would be 3,000 miles away from my family, my mom’s food, my dogs, childhood friends, and more of the things that make California special.
Although I still agree that Cambridge and Boston are very different from California, Harvard actually started to feel more and more like home, and I can’t imagine having spent the past four years anywhere else. And now, almost 4 years later, it feels weird to say that my time here is coming to an end. One of the most beautiful things about having had the privilege to move away from home for college is that you begin to call different places in the world your home, and Harvard will always be one of those places for me.
I want to share some of the things that helped me shift the mindset that I had about what makes a place feel like home and apply that to how I made Harvad feel like home.
- Make your space a mosaic of all your favorite things and people! Your dorm room is something that you come back to every day, and you spend a lot of time here. I had never had my own room prior to college, so I was excited to decorate my own space by adding things that made me happy and reminded me of home. This includes pictures, quotes, artwork, trinkets, and flowers.
- Explore what Boston and Cambridge have to offer outside of Harvard. This is such a nice thing to do throughout all four years here because you discover places that are brand new to you while also coming across places that remind you of home. Fresh Pond, the Boston Harbor, and the Boston Public Garden are some of my favorite places that remind me of walks trails that I often visit in the Bay Area. I especially love to visit East Boston, which is known for its strong Latine roots and diversity. Every September, the city hosts a large Mexican Independence Day festival filled with dance and music, vendors, a variety of food, and many other traditions. My friends and I love attending because it gives us access to some of our favorite things that are hard to access in Harvard Square.
- Join student organizations! Harvard has hundreds of clubs ranging from cultural and identity-based, arts, public service, athletics, pre-professional, and more. Harvard-Radcliffe RAZA is one of the organizations that helped ease the transition to Harvard because it made me realize how large the Mexican community is at Harvard. Throughout my four years here, RAZA has brought some of my favorite traditions from home onto campus. Student orgs are a great way to make friends and feel close to a community.
- Invite your loved ones to campus. This might seem obvious to some, but Harvard students tend to get busy and forget to plan things like this. I am very grateful to have had close family and high school friends visit me throughout my time here, and it feels good to be able to have a small piece of home here for a few days. I know that it isn’t realistic to expect your family to take time off work or book an expensive flight for a weekend, but even inviting friends who are in nearby cities to visit you makes a difference. I’ve felt a lot of pride in being able to show my family and friends who have visited me what my life is like at Harvard.
- Treat yourself to meals that make you feel close to home. I spent a lot of my first couple of years exploring different Mexican restaurants in Cambridge and Boston to judge which of them live up to my mom’s Mexican cooking. Of course, none of them compare to hers, but there are a few spots with good Mexican food that satisfy my cravings. Taqueria Jalisco in East Boston, Maria’s Taqueria in Boston Commons, and Tenoch in Harvard Square are my go-to places when I’m missing my mom’s food. Foods can bring you lots of comfort even when they aren’t something that you culturally grew up eating. Ramen from Waku Waku and pho from Lei’s Vietnamese (both in Havard Squared) are some of the foods that feel very homey to me as well.
If you were worried that you’ll come to Harvard and will have a hard time making this feel like your home, I hope that this helped. Remember, Harvard becoming your home doesn’t make other places any less of your home.
