{"id":11626,"date":"2026-07-21T20:31:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11626"},"modified":"2026-08-03T23:05:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T04:05:36","slug":"cuddly-companions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/cuddly-companions\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuddly companions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between lectures and assignments, cherubs aren\u2019t left with much time to miss home during the day. It\u2019s at nighttime, when all goes quiet, that the homesickness can creep in. Some begin to miss the comfort of their own beds or their pets. Stuffed animals may not be a necessity on the packing list, but the cherubs who brought them were definitely happy with their decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a pink blobfish stuffed animal that I got at an aquarium when I was little,\u201d Calla Taylor of San Diego said. \u201cHis name is Bob and I\u2019ve taken him on many, many trips with me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Taylor brought three stuffed animals in total, but didn\u2019t find herself reaching for them after the first few days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve gotten more confident within the program and more confident with being here away from home,\u201d Taylor said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Olivia Karp of Miami, on the other hand, realized she needed a stuffed animal after struggling the first few days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy love language is physical touch, and I desperately wanted to hug my mom and dad,\u201d said Karp, who ultimately bought a jumbo bunny from a local comic store.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some people, like Reanna Lee of Valley Village, California and Emerson Roux of Brooklyn, New York, had to get creative to fill the void.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Lee, it was her dog’s hair on her clothes and a scratch on her arm from her cat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t really fall asleep unless I\u2019m hugging something, but I didn\u2019t bring anything like that so it\u2019s kind of in the little details like the dog hair,\u201d said Lee, who acknowledged that while they serve as sweet reminders of home, they aren\u2019t tangible in the way a stuffed animal is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Roux wishes she had brought a stuffed animal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have to just cuddle my sweatshirt,\u201d she said, \u2018and it’s not the same as a dog.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuffed animals proved to be important to cherubs during their time in Jones Hall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":11402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[679],"class_list":["post-11626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":679,"user_id":318,"is_guest":0,"slug":"skarp26","display_name":"Shona Karp","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca98b1088da099c105d52e8254c1d2fb27b0700a3b2f1598581b2433f4ecb0e5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Karp","first_name":"Shona","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11626"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13070,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626\/revisions\/13070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11626"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}