In the Septa station at the bottom of the hill in the town of Swarthmore, there is a Swarthmore poster that says “Welcome Home.” I saw it the first time I got to Swat to move in my freshman year and I think about it every time I go back and forth to Swat over breaks. I am from upstate New York, and there are a lot of things I love about being home. I love hanging out with my parents, eating home cooked food, and reading for hours on our back porch. But sometimes, especially when I’m home for longer breaks, I start feeling homesick for Swat. And what I’ve noticed is that it’s never the big things that make me homesick, but small things that I didn’t realize I loved so much until I didn’t have them around me. So, here’s a list of just some of my favorite things at Swat that I didn’t realize were so important to me until I started missing them.

I didn’t discover the recent fiction room in McCabe until my junior year, and it quite literally changed my life. Most of the time at McCabe you’re looking for a book to help with classwork or general research, but sometimes you just want a good book to read in your (limited) free time. I love to read a little bit of fiction before bed, just to help my brain calm down so I can sleep. One day last semester, I had finished my most recent novel and was walking around McCabe, trying to find a new book, when I stumbled into this room on the first floor. There were comfy chairs, cute lamps, recent copies of lots of notable magazines and newspapers, and an entire bookcase of recent fiction. I spent way too long in there looking for a book I wanted to read, checking out the newspapers, and eventually settling in and working. It’s just such a relaxing space and so great to have access to so much new and notable fiction.

This is a controversial opinion, but I lived in Mary Lyons dorm for my sophomore year, and sometimes I really do miss the walk to and from the dorm. Mary Lyons is the only dorm that isn’t directly on Swat’s campus. It’s a 10-15 minute walk away, and while there is a shuttle that will take you up to campus and back and sometimes the walk is a slog, I mostly look back on that walk really fondly. It was a really nice way to get outside in the morning and observe the seasons change, and walking back to my room with my friends after dinner became a really lovely ritual.

Late library nights studying with friends is kind of an essential part of life at Swat, but I never really realize how great it is until I’m not there. I often have a hard time studying with or doing work around other people. It can be really distracting and tends to stress me out. But I’ve started doing more work with friends in the last few years and found a lot of joy in it. I love being able to bounce ideas for an essay or seminar comments off my friends (especially if they’re in the same seminar), and there’s nothing better when you’re struggling with work than to be around sympathetic friends who are also studying. The camaraderie and shenanigans I’ve gotten up to with my friends as the hours get later are just some of the greatest memories I have from the last few years.

But, of course, you can’t just study all night. Sometimes you need a break, and that’s where a trip to Crumb Café and a game of foosball comes in. Crumb Café is a student run café that opens in the dining hall every night from 8-11:30pm. They serve milkshakes, smoothies, grilled cheeses, quesadillas – everything you could want in the middle of a cram session or after a rehearsal. I love going down to crumb with my friends and sharing some snacks, and in the next room over, you can engage in a round or two of foosball or ping pong. I always find that getting my body moving even a little bit can help me loosen up and work better, and it’s also just so much fun. I am okay at ping pong and extremely erratic at foosball, but having a good laugh with my friends is always worth it, whether I win or lose.

You can probably sense a theme here—what I miss more than anything about Swat is the people. As corny as it sounds, the friends I’ve made at Swat are what make the experiences mean so much to me, and they’re the reason I look forward to coming back after every break.