As August kicks off, the reality that students will soon be flooding the MSU campus again begins to set in. For the students, these next few weeks of reuniting with friends and settling into new living spaces are sheer bliss, but for the rest of Starkville, it's a big change from the peace and quiet of summer.
Yes, it's about time for the students of MSU to kiss their summer break goodbye and start preparing for the upcoming school year. Pretty soon cars will be packed and farewells to hometown friends said, as Bulldogs from all over start to head back to maroon and white country. The first few weeks of August are all about transitioning and getting back into the regular routine, and this isn't only true for MSU students, but for the entire town surrounding the campus as well.
Although Starkville isn't completely dead in the summer, the nearly empty apartment complexes and lack of cars flooding Sonic at 11 p.m. prove that there is a noticeable void when the students are gone. Church congregations are smaller, Main Street has more parking, and traffic on Hwy 12 is almost never an issue. For local residents, the serenity is a nice change of pace, and it's easy to get used to the calm atmosphere of the quiet city streets in the June and July months. Any seasoned veteran of living in a college town knows not to get too comfortable though because the students will take the area by storm again as soon as they return in early August.
In those first few weeks of August, Starkville residents are reminded of the less glamorous side of being home to a large SEC school. The mass of students that come pouring back into the town in the span of a few short days can be pretty overwhelming. It might as well be a law that local residents should only go to Wal-Mart during move-in week if it is an absolute emergency. The check-out lines are ridiculous, parking is a mess and the one item that you actually need is probably sold out. The second Saturday in August is always the absolute worst because every freshman parent tries to run to the store to grab that one thing that got left at home, which results in 2,000 anxious moms stuck in a sea of carts and rollback display tables. It's definitely best for local residents to just stay home that day and avoid the chaos all together.
For people who live close to the Cotton District, the noise level during the school year is another hard thing to readjust to again. In the summer months, the district is relatively quiet at night, but when school is in session, you can hear all of the commotion all the way from Main Street. For some residents close to the District, it may take a loud air conditioner or sound soother to drown out the craziness happening just down the road. Regardless of what it takes, the soft silence of a Thursday night in July is definitely not going to be found once the streets have been filled with collegians again.
Of course, not all aspects of readjusting to the students return are difficult. The sound of cowbells and a fresh football season are brought back with the start of school. The days of an empty MSU campus are long gone for a while, and now there are tons of new faces ready to begin their college adventure. Seeing the excitement in the eyes of kids who can't wait to see where their future takes them is encouraging for everyone in Starkville, and it definitely makes all the chaos of starting a new school year worth it.
