By Matthew Purucker · Editor-in-Chief
During my freshman year at Grove City College, I felt stuck between two worlds.
I had my hometown world, the one I had known my whole life, and my college world, the one I was trying to understand my place in.
Even now, it’s weird how isolated a college campus can seem from the outside world. I don’t watch TV here, so I don’t necessarily see how the latest NFL or NCAA Division I football game transpired or what happened in the “hottest” new movies or streaming-service shows.
When my parents visited me, I thought it was strange to see my two worlds combine — don’t even get me started on the time my pastor visited — and when my parents come up for Homecoming Saturday, I’ll still think they’re in the wrong place.
Even without my more isolating-from-the-outside-world college lifestyle, I’m sure at least some of you may have experienced (or continue to experience) aspects of this unique phenomenon, which I’ll dub “college-home dualism.”
College-home dualism can take many forms, from the food you eat to the activities you do and even to the name you’re called. (I’m often known as “Matt,” “Matty P.” or “Purucker” back home, while most people call me “Matthew” here.)
The most common cause of college-home dualism is freedom from the obligations of one’s childhood home. This freedom changes you, forcing you to realign your expectations of life from what you experienced it to mean at home to meet the demands of college life.
The side effects of college-home dualism include the out-of-placeness of seeing someone where they’re not supposed to be — like my parents at Grove — but these side effects are good.
They remind us that we college students are here to prepare ourselves for the next part of our lives, where we will hopefully use the lessons we learn at college about freedom for good in our next world, “the real world,” for many of us. And ultimately, this development in freedom should strengthen us to pursue the only world that matters: the one Christ will deliver.
As you scroll through these pages or stroll across campus, whether in your first year as a student or your 50th year since graduating, I hope your college-home dualism can take root in this 100th Grove City College Homecoming as you find it strange, yet spiritually redemptive, to be here.
