Its that time of the year again in college towns across the United States. Summertime. Students are leaving their colleges heading home, high school kids are graduating and people are genuinely happy. There are some casualties in the preparations for summertime; the students that don’t get to move home for the summer.

Some of your fellow college students might not have the luxury of going home to see their family and old friends. They might have a lese or a job that keeps them in their respective college towns. Many college students have jobs during their time in school; working in retail, fast food or some other low-education job.

During the year it can be a dream with the money coming in and your employer working with your school schedules. During the summer however; you can’t help but notice all of the time your friends are spending at the beach, river or out having a real summer without you.

The summer after my freshman year I had a job with a company that paid well and was expecting to stay there in the summer. This meant moving out of my dorm into an apartment and shifting to living in Stephenville full time.

I was nervous at first, living somewhere else during the school year was different than living there during the summer. During the summer everyone went home and you were left with actual citizens that live here full time.

I was of course scared to death of living by myself in a dorm room but, in an apartment?! There was a kitchen with a stove and other hazards that could become catastrophic !

This is probably my favorite part of summer in my college town. You can tell wherever you go who the locals are now because they start to come out more often knowing majority of the campus has left. Some of the locals aren’t old or hermit-like people, that you thought of when you first heard about the locals. There are some people who are your age that live here all the time and work here too. They can tell you all about the best places to go, what events are a must see and even which bar is the best bar during the summer when there are no college kids to wait in line behind.

Another perk of the summer is that there are no lines. The lines at the grocery store diminish and the lines in just about every fast food chain disappear as well. I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I went to H-E-B after dark and saw there were only ten people in the whole store!

Being in the cowboy capital of the world during the summer also open up many different types of events that I otherwise would have never noticed. I didn’t know until last year that Stephenville did concerts in the summer outside in the park. That was how I got to see Sam Riggs play. I was sitting on a cool lawn and watching the concert with my friends, it was an amazing way to see something like that, instead of in the bars or other concert venues.

Summertime doesn’t always have to be about sadness if you’re in a town all year and cant go home. It can be about discovering who you are in your downtime and becoming emotionally independent.