Whether you have or not, everyone goes through the same question when they are around 18 to 25: will I move away from home? As residents in a first world country, we generally have a choice to stay in a small town in Kansas where you grew up, move to a big city in New York, or find a quaint suburb in New Mexico. What does your chosen town say about you?

According to a Pew Research Center study on American mobility, having a college education makes you far more likely to call someplace other than your hometown home. Could one's level of intelligence or open mindedness have to do flying the coop?

People that stayed in their hometown strike me as people that are not risk takers; they had fears of leaving the nest, and they never pushed past that fear. Of course, packing up and leaving the only place you ever called home is quite a feat.

When you think of people that have accomplished amazing things, they never really stayed in one place. Movie stars, scientists, and revolutionaries often travel. Albert Einstein was born in Germany, spent his early adult years in Switzerland, traveled all around the world, and ended up in the New Jersey of all places. Bill Gates on the other hand was born in Washington, moved across the country to go to Harvard and ended up building Microsoft in New Mexico. He, however, ended up back in Washington where he currently resides.

So does the type of person you are have to do with where you end up, or is it determined by whether you’d be willing to move for any length of time? Perhaps the reason that college educated people are more likely to have lived somewhere besides their hometown is because they went away for college. Maybe they got a taste for life outside of their hometown as a young person. Perhaps those that remain comfortable in their hometown are only comfortable because they don’t know of anything else.

One thing remains true: traveling opens the minds eye to many possibilities. People vary widely from place to place. If you remain in the place you were born and never leave, you may never get a chance to experience life from a different perspective. So go, release your inhibitions, look in the face of the unknown and smile.