When I first began looking at colleges, I hoped and intended to be within four hours driving distance from my hometown. I wanted to be within doable driving distance so that getting to and from school and home for breaks would not be a huge hassle.

However, I fell in love with Ithaca College and ended up moving 350 miles away to attend this dream school of mine, which is about six hours from my home in Massachusetts. Although I am farther away from home than I intended to be, I am proud that I had the courage to move away from home to attend the school that I knew was perfect for me.

I think that a lot of people who move far away from college are assumed to be running away from their families or their hometowns in a spiteful way, as a way of escaping their past. This may be the case sometimes, but I do not think that it is common as often as people may believe.

In my opinion, and I believe my brother who goes to school in Ohio would agree, I think leaving my home state of Massachusetts to attend college was not a product of desire to escape, but instead a product of being raised to be independent. Leaving home for college shows that you are ready to explore someplace new and take advantage of one of the only times in your life where you can go wherever you choose.

I believe that my parents raised me well enough to want to live on my own and to move away and explore somewhere new. They spent many years encouraging my brother and I to live away at a college or university in order to truly get the full experience and gain independence. I am glad that they pressed this issue, because living away from home has helped me mature and is preparing me for the future.

My hometown in Massachusetts is tiny and suburban, but I did not move away to run from that either. Living in a small town and being so actively involved in my high school made me realize my abilities as a leader, and encouraged me to pursue my dreams at college while giving me the maturity to follow these dreams six hours away.

I am incredibly lucky that I can live so far away and still keep in contact with all of my friends and family from home and that they support my choices completely. This is proof that my roots at home and my connections to them have given me the strength to move away as opposed to pushing me to leave in a spiteful way.

As I stated in a previous article about being one of eleven in my grade who left New England for college, I believe that my roots have given me the courage to move away and the strength to be independent in an unfamiliar setting.