Despite Scripps College being just two hours away from where I grew up, lately I’ve found myself wishing to close my eyes, click my heels and vanish by declaring the phrase: “There’s no place like home.”
Whether it’s a house, a town or a group of people, home is something you find yourself missing as soon as it’s gone. For me, home where I was born and lived my entire life: the sunny, coastal city of San Diego.
I didn’t know it was possible to long for a place that was so close yet so far. But after spending the school year in a new and unfamiliar place, I began to think of my old routines like passing by the infamous post-football game. In-N-Out on my drive to school and watching the sunset on the train tracks at Del Mar beach.
The more I missed home, however, the more I sought out ways of making college more meaningful to me. It wasn’t so much the places I was remembering, but the memories I had created.
Through clubs and affinity spaces, college has provided an unexpected opportunity to combat homesickness by connecting me to my Asian heritage and culture in a way I didn’t experience on the sunny coast.
Although I love my hometown of San Diego, I often felt the disconnect that many people of color face while growing up in a predominantly white community. I expected going to school at the 5Cs would be a similar experience, but surprisingly I have found the opposite.
Engaging with the Asian community has been a natural avenue for me to create meaningful relationships and experiences. Joining affinity groups in my first semester was my first big step in realizing that any place — even a college campus — can transform into a home away from home.
When I first joined these groups, I entered the space with uncertainty. From being in numerous clubs throughout high school that were (not so secretly) created to impress on college applications, how else was I expected to feel?
I was proven wrong as early on as fall semester, when Scripps’ Asian American Sponsor Program took a retreat to Big Bear. As we carpooled and karaoked, explored the local village and conversed over authentic home-cooked meals, I learned that it only takes the right group of people to make an outsider feel included.
Conversations with others didn’t feel stilted or forced. In fact, expressing my interests and relating to others who I had only just met felt easier than ever.
It was on this very trip that I cried for the first time in college — and while watching Joy Ride, no less. Even though Joy Ride is superficially about a group of friends on a wild, comedic adventure, it is at its heart a story about friendship and self-discovery — a reflection of the exact struggles I was facing as a college first-year.
It might seem obvious to most, but I had never really considered that joining groups centered around Asianness and my cultural identity could be the missing puzzle.
Growing up, I often felt ashamed of my lack of fluency in front of extended family and embarrassed of my cultural knowledge around friends. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so part of a community that I never engaged with before moving away from home.
Finding cultural affinity in college has not just illuminated a shortcoming in my upbringing — it’s also led me to discover that growth comes when removing yourself from what you’ve become used to.
Back home, I participated in cultural opportunities when presented because they were just there. In college, however, the decision to engage with my cultural identity turned into one motivated by genuine interest, resulting in a place where I gained belonging and acceptance.
I don’t want to learn about my culture because of shame or outside pressure, but because it interests me and because I want to. And, when I go back home for breaks, I don’t have to leave behind my cultural connection and pride: I can come home committed to being more authentic to myself and grateful for the bonds I have with the people around me.
Grace Kim SC ’27 is from San Diego, California. She loves listening to movie soundtracks, eating sour candy and reading Letterboxd reviews.
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