Growing up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., I had the best of both worlds.

I got to experience the niceties of a quiet but populated suburban town and the excitement of having the nation’s capital at my fingertips. For ten years I lived in this perfect mix of metropolitan rurality. I would take a day trip to the national mall and then come home to my mom and pop's coffee shop.

I would explore the boisterous D.C. streets at night and then return to a home that was set comfortably back from the loud streets. I would ride my bicycle through the seas of tourists who represented different races, ethnicities, and cultures from all over the world and then fearlessly pedal home to my familiar, family-friendly neighborhood.

I loved it.

They were the best ten years of my life. Then came my senior year of high school; it was time to pick a place to start the next chapter of my life. Pennsylvania State University is where I chose for my endeavors. Home of the Nittany Lions and one of the greatest football teams of the century.

I had heard great things about State College, Pennsylvania. It was described as a town with streets constantly filled with students, a community that always feels like home and a place that would make me want to bleed blue and white till the day I die.

I was welcomed to Penn State with a rude awakening.

What every article failed to mention was that State College was only lively due to the university. There was quite literally nothing else going on there. Every corner I turned was filled with a sea of (mostly) the same color of skin, and every person I met had some affiliation with the school. I never realized how many opportunities one school could offer to so many people.

I hated it.

Where was my train ride to the city? Where were my always-ready Uber drivers? Where was my abundance of diverse people? I didn’t understand what was to like about this town. 70,000 of us were stuck with three Starbucks shops, five or six nice restaurants, and a few fast food places.

The life I had been so accustomed to was nothing like this. I felt like every person I saw on the streets was a replica of the person whom I had just passed. Everyone was decked out in blue and white on game days and heaving hefty backpacks every other day.

But then I traveled back home for a weekend.

I remember getting on a long Greyhound bus that read “Washington D.C” at the top. My stomach fluttered with butterflies. I was so happy to run from this God forsaken town, even if was just for a weekend. I waved goodbye to rural Pennsylvania and counted down the minutes until I was back in my beloved city.

Upon arrival, I ran to my dad's car. I smiled ear to ear, threw my bags in and watched the busy city flash past my eyes on the drive back home. I slept happily that night in my own bed, listening to the subtle sounds of cars driving by, something I had never noticed before.

I woke up happy.

I felt a pang of hunger in my stomach, so I hopped down my staircase to the kitchen. I looked through my pantry for something that would make my mouth water, but I was not satisfied. I didn’t want this food. I didn’t want Bisquick pancake mix. I didn’t want cereal. I didn’t want to make my own eggs.

I wanted to go to my favorite breakfast spot at State College and enjoy a fresh omelet with homemade french toast while laughing with my new friends. I wanted to be able to walk to every store I needed access to, not to navigate my car through a busy city. I wanted to walk down Beaver Avenue and coincidentally run into friends I'd been meaning to make plans with. I wanted to go home to State College.

That visit to my hometown made me realize how thankful I am to have chosen a small college town.

Anyone who goes to school in a college town can relate, I’m sure. If you're one of these people then you can relate to finding comfort in seeing everyone struggle through the same problems that you're dealing with. You can relate to forming close bonds with new friends after being confined by four walls for hours when there’s nothing to do some days except to sit and talk.

You can relate to the excitement everyone shares while walking to the football stadium and feeling the crowd's roars echo through the whole the town. You can relate to the happiness felt at that first daylong of the year after a gruesome, blistering winter.

I now saw that the beauty was its lack of options.

The State College community understood my everyday struggles and vice versa. All 70,000 of us were one community, one family. Rain or shine, win or lose, bowl eligible or not bowl eligible, canning weekend or no canning weekend, we were one unit. And no one could break us.

You have your whole future to live in a city.

Most of us are not going to pursue careers that have an affiliation with a university, so a city will be our only choice. These four years of undergrad are the only years you can truly appreciate a college town for what it is—a town specially made for our basic day longs, 4:00 a.m. walks back from the library and drunken mistakes.

Although I had access to pretty much whatever I wanted for 10 years at home, these four short years will far surpass my adventures in a city. So, no matter what skyscraper-filled, constantly noisy, never sleeping city I end up in, I will always have State College, PA to fall back on.

This is why everyone should experience what it's like to live in a small college town.