Pullman, as any faculty, staff, current student, or alumni can tell you, is a very special place. It's a little piece of paradise in the middle of the wheat fields. From an outside perspective, I know that it doesn't really sound possible. I mean I didn't think it was at first. But now that I'm here, and I've fallen in love with this place I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
The best thing about Pullman is also the worst thing. Pullman is special because it's Pullman, but it's also a weird place because it's Pullman. When you're in here and on campus especially, it's all cougar all the time. You really get sucked in. I'd even go as far as to say you drink the kool-aid. I mean there's WSU cougar heads on the ground of every intersection. Talk about cougar pride.
Being in Pullman creates this bubble around you; you kind of become disconnected from the outside world a little bit. We live in a little oasis, and it's a bubble no one can pop. I hadn't ever really thought about it this way, though, until my roommate turns to me one day with an epiphany that she doesn't know anything that's going on in the world. So I started to think about it too, and as I was surfing the internet looking for inspiration to write this article about something up to date and relevant and interesting, I realized that I don't know too much about what's going on outside the city limits of Pullman. I mean, yeah Brangelina broke up, and football players are taking a stand by not standing, but in my day to day Pullman life those are all small things that just don't impact me. I read an article or two about them and then I move on with my life. My main concerns are my paper due next week and which philanthropy events I'll be attending that weekend. That sounds pretty superficial when there is so much going on out there in the world that matters so much more in the grand scheme of things, but it’s just what impacts me in the most direct way.
I think the weirdest thing about being home was feeling like I wasn’t at home exactly. Like part of my heart was in Pullman, but also like a part of my heart was still in Federal Way. The familiarity of 51st, and 320th, and the “ghetto” Safeway down the street from my high school. Part of me never wanted to leave, but when I woke up on Sunday morning and looked around my Husky-purple bedroom (a regrettable decision in hindsight) I realized that wasn’t me anymore. My letters from soccer and track hanging on the wall meant almost nothing to me, I just wasn’t the person I was the last time I had stood in that room and I hadn’t even realized it. Being away had allowed me to look at myself and the world around me in a different way. I am no longer the track captain or the soccer player, or the leadership kid. Instead, I’m a com. major, and a sorority girl, and now I guess an Odyssey content creator. Funny how things change isn’t it? You think you know who you are and then you go to college. But that’s what it’s for, right?
I left a piece of my heart in the Dirty Fed, but the rest of me is here in Pullman. Is it possible to feel the need to be in both places at once? Federal Way will always be home, but Pullman is my new adventure and I’m not backing down from this amazing experience and place that I love.
