If you had asked me at the end of my junior year in high school where I envisioned myself applying and attending college, I would have happily rattled off statistics about where kids from my part of Massachusetts, with my grade point average tended to get in, and what I thought about those schools. I would have told you whether I was favoring New York City or Boston for any of their numerous schools.
Had you told me that I would be writing this article, sitting more than 3,000 miles away from my home, my friends, and basically anything familiar, I would have probably laughed uncomfortably and launched promptly into a panic attack.
The 16-year-old me that drooled over college magazines and relentlessly checked SAT and ACT score averages for my favorite schools is an entirely different person from the 18-year-old that only recently said goodbye to her mother in an airport in Boston, and boarded a six-hour flight to Portland, Oregon.
While I am not the first to travel far away for school, nor am I even traveling the farthest of my friends, packing my suitcase and mastering my breathing exercises before relinquishing the keys to my car and home has been tantamount Odysseus navigating his way home from sea.
Born and raised in New England, I am a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee. Until fairly late in the college process, I was convinced there was no reason to leave Massachusetts, let alone the Northeast, to attend college. Boston alone is host to more than 100 colleges, attracting over 250,000 college students to the city each September, which begs the question, shouldn’t that imply there is something for any and everyone?
Certainly I could have found a liberal arts college, small and similar enough to the West Coast school I am attending, a mere half hour from my home rather than a plane ride away, yet I couldn't get myself to stay.
I have always advertised myself as a fairly adventurous person, not afraid to venture away from the house for weeks at a time, to summer programs and camping expeditions, but something like the West Coast seemed almost too foreign for me to even comprehend.
A child of divorce, I have spent weeks away from one or both parents at a time, and have become accustomed to making my own way and garnering a certain sense of independence. Yet the thought of leaving both parents behind, as well as the extended family that comes with them, seemed bizarre. Why leave the comfort of my hometown, close enough to relatives for monthly extended family dinners, for a coast where I believed I would be forced to leave such a support system behind?
Who would want to leave this skyline?
The answer I finally came to, when I accepted my offer of admission to Lewis & Clark College, was that I had become stagnant. Driving around the city I lived in, and the town I attended middle and high school in, I believed I could predict everything that would happen during the fifteen minute drive from school to home. I would see neighbors biking with their children, the same Dunkin' Donuts I bought coffee from every morning, and I would even recognize the cars of other students from my school, making the familiar left turn out of the driveway.
The thought of attending school in New England, so close to this home I soon deemed “too familiar” suddenly became claustrophobic, as though, through staying close to home, I would bring all of my academic and personal problems and stresses with me.
In hindsight, I am aware that there are many things I could have done to distance myself from such problems, aside from the physical distance I have now put between me and such issues. I have seen several peers attend college less than twenty minutes away from their homes while still maintaining the impression of living hours and states away.
The solution that appeared to me was a drastic one. I do not recommend forcing yourself to travel far away from your comfort zone for college, but if you, like me, find yourself in the situation of discovering your comfort zone has become more like confinement than an actual place of refuge, I would recommend looking for a school that offers the programs you like, that doesn’t necessarily need to be located in your backyard.
My newly found gung-ho attitude about relocating across the continent does not discount the fact that I cried saying goodbye to my best friend, my mother, and my dog. I sorely miss where I am from and the people and places (and animals!) I love there, but I know they will all be waiting for me when I return for winter break, and if I let the fear of missing someone limit the adventures I let myself have, I would never have even left my room.
This school year, I am looking forward to discovering myself away from the person I’ve become after a succession of small private schools in suburban areas for the past nine years. I’m hoping the West Coast version of myself is a little less anxious in the face of change, a little more confident and outgoing with people I’ve never met before, and content in the place I’ve chosen to place all my chips on.
