Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

Here's a question for you.

What was it like when you had to leave your home for the first time?

And I'm not talking about going away on a trip.

I'm not talking about going off to school for the first time.

I'm talking about leaving, moving out.

Maybe it was during your childhood and your parents decided that you were going to move to another location and live somewhere else. Or maybe you graduated from high school and decided to go

off to college or university and you didn't know exactly what that was going to

be like. Or maybe you went off to the military. There are lots of different versions of this,

but I have a feeling that almost all of us have been through this at some point in our lives,

and for many of us, the scariest part is

the unknown. What will it be like when you get there? Will you meet new people? Will you

fit into the community? Are you going to find your place? But for Frodo, this is a very different

kind of thing. And I have a feeling that what we're

about to get into in Chapter 3 is probably more analogous to something that Tolkien himself

felt than most of us went through. When I decided to go away to college, I was already one year into my college education. I hadn't

quite figured out what I wanted to major in, and I really didn't have a sense of what I wanted to

study at all. And so I had the scholarships, and I had support for my parents, but I spent that

first year at a local

community college. And I realized during that first year that I was ready, that 13th grade was

plenty of high school for me. It was time to go off to an actual university somewhere. And so I left

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