Homecoming 2015

This weekend, the campus will swell with the addition of more than 4,500 parents and alumni, here to reminisce and revel in the company of classmates past and take in the sights and sounds of Berkeley. For some, looking at campus landmarks and residence halls stirs nothing more than the memory of dropping off children on move-in day, but for others, the return to Berkeley signifies something more — a kind of coming home.

If you take a look around this weekend, you might notice that a few things are a little out of the ordinary. The trees are newly pruned, it’s a tad cloudier than normal, and campus is positively swarming with mobs of parents, siblings and alumni. Welcome to Homecoming Weekend, kids.

Although I’m in my third year at UC Berkeley, the word “homecoming” still brings me back to the days at my big Texas public high school. That place, where my senior portrait hung on the wall by the main entrance, was always home to me. I never doubted that I belonged there — it was certainty rooted in immortalized traditions, recurring over generations and indubitably into the future.