As a student who lives in Florida when not attending Curry College, I get the very frequent reaction of "What the hell are you doing studying at Curry College?" and to a certain degree, I can understand their surprise at me choosing the sometimes difficult choice of living out of state. While I've been asked this question multiple times throughout my time at Curry College, I've never been able to fully justify all my motives for not remaining in the sunshine state. A big portion of that is due to the fact that I myself didn't quite understand all my motives while choosing which college I would be basing my future prospects and dreams out of. I didn't simply attend Curry College because of the financial aid I had received, and hopefully the next seven reasons I'll be listing can shed some light as to what I'm still doing here three years later.
1. I'm a very independent person.
Being a very independent person means that while I rely on my friends and family to get me through difficult times and to have my back, I prefer to see the world independently of their views and ideas sometimes. Seeing the world through your own eyes, forming your own unfiltered personal opinions, exploring the world without the nagging idea of not having company allows you to truly enjoy some of life's more personal moments. You will not always be surrounded by your friends and family and that is completely fine. Sometimes the things you experience are best remembered for their unfilteredness, for them being unsullied by a negative comment or thought that may later influence how you remember that moment. Of course, in college, that isn't necessarily the case when you're living on campus and constantly running into people you know. My independence in college comes from the liberty of being able to jump on a train and go wherever I'd like for the night. It comes from not always having to answer to my parents in regards to what I'm doing. It allows me to have the choice to do any number of things due to the independence offered away from home.
2. I wanted to get back to my roots.
While this is normally contrary to why a student chooses to attend college out of state, the reality for me is that while I was actually born in Massachusetts, I never had the chance to actually grow up here. I was born in Cambridge, MA and lived in Somerville until my father passed away when I was three. As an adult who has now lived in Florida and Brazil, I felt it was time to go back to my roots and experience the opportunity that I missed throughout my childhood. After the brutal blizzards during my freshman year and the very odd winter during my sophomore year, I can state that I'm a northerner once more.
3. It was time to get away from my parents' influence.
Don't get me wrong here, my family is my foundation and they come before anything else in my life. I love my family and value their opinions, but I'm also aware that they are not always correct in their assumptions. That doesn't mean I ignore the advice they give me, but being so far away from home allows me to think and act a certain way that I normally have to restrict myself to when at home. As much as I'd love to talk politics with my mother, she'd likely tell me to go clean the dishes if the conversation didn't go her way at times. At the same time, however, I always value the sacrifices my parents have made to afford me this amazing opportunity and their understanding of what it means to leave home for a better future.
4. It Was Time to See Some New Sights
I will concede this point, Milton is a very difficult town to get out off and move away from sometimes due to the lack of proximity to public transportation around Curry College. However, I have used the Fairmount and Readville commuter rail stops very frequently in the past to go into Boston and have a great time! While Florida is entertaining, it doesn't quite provide the historical and opportunistic sense that Boston gives me every time I visit. I'm a traveler at heart, and my soul is destined to travel to far off places even if my body may not always be able to. Coming to Massachusetts and being so close to Boston has definitely been the first step in seeing even more of the world!
5. The routine of where I lived bored me.
Go to school, go to work, rinse, wash, repeat, etc. I abhorred living in Florida by the time I had finished my odd last year at a High School, where I felt out of place and bored most of the time. Florida is beautiful in its own sunny way, but a change of pace in the weather is always nice and a permanent break from the self-centered people there was even better. I wanted to grow in an intelligent manner, to break away from the repetitiveness of my everyday life, and so I needed to get as far away from Florida as was possible. If my parents didn't live and work there, I would likely never return to the humid hell that is Florida.
6. Starting From Scratch Was One Of My Highest Priorities
The idea of going to college went hand-in-hand with recreating my image, changing how I perceived myself, and moving away from the negative traits that I hated about myself. Of course, being in my junior year now I can realize the mistakes that I made with choosing who I hung out with and the decisions I made in trying to change my image. But even if starting from scratch wasn't always the fun option, it has allowed me to grow exponentially and the mistakes I've made have served as valuable lessons moving forward. Choosing to be so far away from home and starting at a zero sum liberated me to the world, my only regret is that I didn't realize the full implications of that in my Freshman year.
7. I needed to change as a person, so my surroundings needed to change.
I hated the old me. Indecisive. Inflexible. Sad. Angry. Depressed. All words that paint an image of the old me that was unable to change and refused to think he was ever wrong. I needed to change, desperately, and so everything around me needed to change. It was time to go out and conquer the world, it was time to shape my future and fundamentally move away from the person I used to be. Of course, it's always an ever going process and the person I am today is certainly flawed. We all are in some form or another, but it's choosing to acknowledge those flaws and have the space to work on them that a college experience away from home has provided.
