When I first decided to pack my bags and move from small town Florence, MT to Denver, CO the only thought I had was “Wow! I’m going to have a lot more options for things to do for fun here than I do back home!” Seeing that my only experience in a large city was from a school trip to Anaheim, CA in 2013, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. When you are getting ready for college, you can read all the online articles and lists you want, to “prepare” yourself, but no number of how-to articles will tell you how it REALLY is. Sure I had more than enough supplies for my apartment and I knew how to make my small bedroom extra cute and homey but what I didn’t know was Denver.

Traffic for example; I didn’t know it would take me 30 minutes to drive 7 miles compared to back home where you can drive 7 miles in under five minutes. I didn’t know that while driving in town and on the interstate people just cut you off and never use their turn signals. What do people think those are for anyways? And I definitely did not know about the stand still traffic that seems to happen every single day on I-25, no matter what time I head out. What about parking? I have had to attempt parallel parking more times just this semester than I my first four years of driving combined.

The amount of people living in this city was astounding. Just people, people everywhere. There are more people living in Denver than my entire state of Montana. There definitely was no how-to article on how to survive this. The big crowds are everywhere; even at the most common places, like the grocery store or having to wait in line for twenty minutes to get gas. With there being so many people living in the Denver area, it seems that every square inch of this city is suburbanized. While in Denver you can’t just go drive down an old dirt road with the sunroof open and your speakers blaring. Those dirt roads don’t exist around here. You have to go searching for one and who knows how long it will take to find it. Back home a good thing to do on a late night is find an old back road in the mountains and drive around with your best friend while your favorite song is turned all the way up. Its these things that make the transition from small town Montana to the big city the most difficult.

But despite these challenges the amount of opportunities this city has given me in the past two and a half years and counting is equally as amazing. From my first ever light rail ride to downtown Denver for Cheesecake Factory to a last minute Nuggets game in the middle of February to a school dance at Sports Authority Field to still being able to visit the mountains by just hoping in my car; the good things far outweigh my huge distaste for this city’s traffic and crowded public places. I can’t wait to see what other opportunities this city brings me in the coming years but my small Montana town will always have my heart.