Before I start, a disclaimer: This week I’m not encouraging anyone to break the law or to cause a ruckus. This is simply my personal experience. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and every year for the last four years I have traveled home for Thanksgiving.

This year will mark the fifth time I make the trek across Massachusetts, down I-84, to I-684, to the Tappan Zee Bridge, to I-95 to I-195 back to I-95 to the second exit in Pennsylvania. This morning I forced myself to look back upon each of those trips. I discovered the annual holiday tells a tiny, poetic story about me outgrowing the place where I grew up.

There are some things that are always the same. Thanksgiving dinner with my family always begs the same half-patronizing, half-interested questions from my family: How are your grades? Looking for any jobs? Did you meet a nice Jewish girl?

As freshmen, my friends were excited to tell me about their schools, and just as excited to hear about mine. We shared out college exploits, exaggerated for effect of course. And a dork like me couldn’t pass up a visit to my old high school. As I wandered around my old town, it seemed slightly stilted — not because things changed, but because they remained unchanged. Then again, it had only been three months. But there was a palpable difference. Maybe it was me that was changing? My mind was playing tricks on me. The faces that had become as familiar as wallpaper over the last months peeked out on my periphery. I kept thinking I saw someone from BU around every corner. All false alarms.

Sophomore year was a bit different. I lost touch with some of my high school friends, relegating them in my mind to mere acquaintances. Is this starting to sound familiar? My friends — my true friends — were even closer. So much so that we have a get together, a leftovers night. Dozens of people will come. My friends and I have ours on Friday. We call it Second Thanksgiving. We trade stories once again, this time understanding the nuances of the places we go to school and the people we go with. Someone shares a story about how he broke up with his first college girlfriend – she cheated on him. Someone else admits to contracting an STD — a mild one. Another friend comes out of the closet – no one is really surprised. My home friends provide a respite from college life. I can decompress. I can be honest with them, or I can lie.

This time, returning to Boston felt like a warm hug. The skyline greeted me like a familiar face. It’s a different kind of comfort from home.

During junior year, the Second Thanksgiving was not as well attended — that’s OK, more food for the few. A once homogeneous group of friends, my closest friends, was now starting to split in different directions. Questions arose: Why are your pants so tight? Why is your beard so long? You sure are drinking a lot, aren’t you?

That’s because we were no longer malleable mounds of clay eager to try new things. We’d started to become real people, twenty-somethings with a sense of self and style. We were different from who we used to be, and different from one another. One hoped not too different, however, and that we still accepted one another.

By senior year Thanksgiving was smaller still, and it came with new faces as friends brought their significant others home to meet the real family — or rather the people whose acceptance they really needed… ours. Worse, some of my close friends were gone. They were with their significant others, having Second Thanksgiving with his or her friends. Since everyone was 21 by this point, we went to a local bar. Once inside, we see every single person we went to high school with. The impromptu reunion was full of high-pitched squeals, hugs, awkward moments, close encounters with ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, and rounds of the ever popular game, “Who got fat?” If your experience was similar, you probably exchanged phone numbers and promised to stay in contact, though you knew you never would.

At this point, I longed to get back to Boston. My real life was here now, just in time for graduation and to move on once again. I suppose it all makes sense that your college days are nothing but a transition.

Some, like me, stay in Boston past their welcome. Whether for grad school or work, this is their home to stay. And this year will mark the fifth year that I travel back down to Pennsylvania to eat turkey and uncontrollably fall asleep — two days in a row. You probably don’t feel like a different person since last year, but examine yourself. Since last Thanksgiving, I made a film, recorded an album, graduated college, signed to a record label, went on tour, got robbed three times and had 22 different roommates. There will be a lot to tell this year.