I remember it was when I was around seven years old when I first saw it. It was the first winter to learn how to ski. My parents, always ready with camera to take tons of pictures of me, would always carry it with them. Then there was me, always wondering what would happen if one of its legs wasn’t there along with the other ones. Whenever I asked how it worked, my mom would say “if one of the legs falls, then they all fall.” The way how I looked at tripod was curious and mysterious but somewhat interesting. Who would have thought I would be one of its legs in several years later.

As a freshman, I took my first step to the western world through a school in Quebec, Canada called Stanstead College. Obviously, it was a strange place for me. Not only the unusual environment surrounded me, but also the bizarre language that surrounded my ears was an obstacle I had to overcome. Even though I got close to foreign friends, we didn’t have the “BFF” relationship where we could know how each other feel without telling. Only people I could be as close were Korean friends. Still having tight friendship with foreign friends, I was closer with Koreans since we could share how it feels to live far from our motherland and study abroad. Among many of them, I was particularly close to two of them, Daniel and Jae. Whenever any circumstances, we would back up for each other. We kept our firm friendship so we don’t fall as a whole. I’m not sure when, but we started calling ourselves as the tripod since we can only function when we all support each other. In fact, if one of us falls, we all fall and cannot have a good picture.

If people think about their home, they literally think about their “home” where they can have physical ease. Nevertheless, home is where you can be mentally and emotionally comfortable. Home is what defines and characterizes you. For me, relationship with people around me is the home. The best example for this is the tripod relationship I had with my two great buddies at Stanstead College. Indeed, when people ask about me, two other legs of tripod can describe me better than I do. So reminding myself about what my mom said about the tripod, I continue to develop my home at Culver Academies. Remember, “If one of the legs falls, then they all fall.”