Ordinarily, I'm chomping at the bit to come back to campus within just a few days of being home on break. My closest and dearest friends have lovingly described my family as absolutely crazy.

To be sure, things there are plenty hectic. My week home was a series of chauffeuring people to work, school and volleyball practice, running errands, caring for an ever-growing number of pets, visiting old ladies who like to catch up when I'm in town, being nagged about everything from the length of my hair to the way I peel potatoes and taking great pains to spend equal time with friends from home according to their availability.

And yet, not even a week back at school, I'm already pining for Easter Break.

It's ironic, because I typically view home as a stressor. My friends in the past had trouble understanding that I didn't have the same freedom in my social schedule as they had, largely because I have a 10-year-old sister at home whom I would need to care for if other people were gone. I'd be lying if I said that my chronic lack of punctuality was not somewhat a part of my personality, but a lot of it also came from having spontaneous responsibilities at home.

It's a completely different lifestyle from the life I've constructed for myself on campus. Here, I'm still very busy and don't have oodles of free time, but I'm in almost complete control of what I do and when I choose to do it. I can fiddle much more with my calendar and planner while at school than I can when I am subject to other people's schedules. I make my own priorities while I'm away. A prime reason why I decided to go away to school in the first place is that before I left home, my time was not completely my own.

The difference is this year, that suddenly stopped bugging me.

Maybe it's because most of my friends weren't yet on Spring break, or because considering how chaotic my current semester is I don't have as much control anyway. But in truth, I think the clincher was when my little sister told me how much she missed me.

I think I finally get how parents can't understand their teenagers. While I like to think I'm on my little sister's side and doing what's good for her, I began to see over break that I may have taken a few steps into mean grown-up territory. Though I'm only 10 years older than my little sib, I often forget what the world looks like through her younger, shorter eyes. At her age, I hated being bossed around, having no say in my daily itinerary, being told I was too little, getting lectured and nagged and scolded by older people all day, every day. I used to feel left out when my older sister reached rites of passage like dances and a later curfew that I wouldn't attain for a few more years. While I'm away at school, there's a mountain of new experiences she has that I don't get to share with her.

For all the time I had to play taxi with the family minivan last week, I spent just as much time playing catch, watching cartoons and having tickle fights with my little sister. And when I turned 21 last weekend, I was able to do some bonding with my older sister, too.

For a change, I didn't evaluate my break by where I went, how much I did or how late I slept. Instead, I rated it by how much closer I felt to my family. And I rated this break very highly.