By the time one enters high school and can take part in homecoming, they have most likely been in that town or area for at least a decade — it already has significance. You’ve watched the same trees die and resurrect year after year and let the twists and turns of the local backroads carve a path in the back of your mind. If nothing else, you can physically feel how small the world is as you grow older in front of the never-changing backdrop.

The thing is, a college homecoming can’t really mean much to someone who doesn’t feel like their university and/or town is “home.” When someone attends their first college homecoming, they’ve usually only been on campus for less than a few months. Sure, there is a spectacle to it and an energy that permeates campus for a week, but projecting a meaning from that onto the self is nearly impossible; you feel like an intruder.

You feel like there is something your fellow classmates and preceding alums understand that you fundamentally cannot comprehend. They’re speaking a different language in an accent that is hard to gauge, hard to like, hard to enjoy and hard to be around.

I’ve been there before. I transferred to Ohio University from a school in northern Ohio where I first felt this sensation of otherness; it was not fun at all. I spent one semester there and I didn’t even experience homecoming — I went to a different campus to hang out with my friends. My classmates back north seemed to be victims of a trance that I somehow avoided but wished I didn’t. The traditions meant nothing. I didn’t care for the ceremonies or the showmanship that was taking place. It was a depressing feeling of alienation.

I’ll admit, last fall I didn’t feel much when my first OU Homecoming came around. I had been in Athens for less than a full school year, I kept getting lost on campus and I was generally having a hard time easing into Athens and my classes. A ceremony in which the average attendee had green coursing through their veins was unimportant to me. I had to convince myself I liked being here.

It took a while; it took some long weeks, longer weekends and an open heart and mind, but I came around to this place. I can’t name a moment, just as I can’t name the moment I started loving my car or my cat or the Phillies, but I knew after some point my eyes dilated more when I looked around on College Green; my arms hung looser when I walked between classes. My affection for these streets has, and continues to, grow; I know them a bit better, they’re not painted on the back of my head yet, but they exist somewhere.

That’s what Homecoming is about. I can’t imagine not having an affection for Athens anymore, and that’s what is to be celebrated. It’s not celebrating having chosen a school one likes, but what the school has done to me and everyone else who will be on campus this weekend. We’re celebrating our shared green blood.

Matthew Butcher is a junior studying English at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Matthew know by tweeting him @mattpbutcher.