Small School, Even Smaller Town

Imagine this: You wake up in your dorm room and you don't hear much of anything at all. No traffic or cars honking and no chatter coming from any sort of city street below your window. The air doesn't smell like any sort of street food (which can be unfortunate at times) and it's generally pretty clean.

Instead, there's a sense of quiet. There might be the sound of a few birds or squirrels scurrying around and the occasional car or truck on the closest roads, but that's about it. (Honestly, the lack of noise makes it pretty hard to wake up in the morning for those early classes if you ask me.)

After getting dressed and taking your sweet time to brew some very necessary coffee, you walk outside and immediately find it impossible to not say "Hi" to somebody that you know. No matter how far your trek to class may be, there are at least five morning greetings squeezed into that short amount of time.

Once you get to class, it's hard to hide in the back and not get called on because you're probably only one of 12 to 15 students in that space. After a week or two, most professors know your name because it's hard not to get to know everyone at a school with a much smaller student-to-teacher ratio.

Walking back from your classes later on in the day usually guarantees 15 more greetings (at the very least). It's not until you get back that you realize that your car has no gas, everyone else is in class and you have no choice but to walk to the store and get what you need. Even so, it's not such a huge deal because the population of the town that you live in is about an eighth of what you're used to back home and every place is squished together in one compact area.

If you can relate to any tidbit of this, then you're in the same position as me: You're attending a relatively small school in a tiny, sleepy town.

I can honestly say that I hated it when I first got here. I was so used to a much less rural area and a much higher population. While there are a lot of stores and places around here that make it convenient for me, I still miss Chipotle and Wegmans 95 percent of the time that I'm here.

Regardless, I've grown to love it. While I can't exactly pinpoint when it happened, I've become so accustomed to this sleepy town that I've grown to love it. Getting to know everyone and appreciating the little things has become an even bigger part of my life than I ever could have imagined.

Wherever you are and whatever small town you're in, appreciate it. It might be years from now, but you'll look back and miss those late nights walking through fields with your friends and walking down the streets of town in the daytime greeting everybody that you know and even some that you don't.

Plus, it's pretty much a given that us small schools from small towns have the best school spirit around.