The thought of a small, suburban or rural town with cute shops and independent restaurants certainly sounds charming and quaint, but in reality, most small towns (at least mine) can start to feel boring and stale to people like me, who have lived there their whole lives.

I transitioned from going to a high school—where I knew everyone's name, grade, address, significant other, hair color and a bunch of other useless information about their lives because they were the same people I've grown up with my whole life—to going to the largest state university in New Jersey—where the number of undergraduates trumps the number of residents in my whole home town. At Rutgers, I have the opportunity to meet new people every day and constantly build relationships with people by learning more about them. That is something I can confidently say is one of my favorite things about going to RU. I think the craziest thing about coming home is that I feel like I am such a different person, but my town stays exactly the same.

While I was excited to come home to my own room and my home friends, the allure of my favorite hometown breakfast place wore off really quickly. After the initial excitement of seeing my home friends died down, we quickly sunk back into the typical, "Hey, I'm bored wanna do something?"

"Yeah, same. What do you wanna do?"

"IDK, I'm broke so like something that doesn't involve a lot of money."

"Should we go to Woody's again?"

"We were just there yesterday. We can't,"

…. we all know where this conversation goes. It leaves you at home, laying in bed with ice cream and Netflix and sort of resenting your life. Whereas when I'm at school, I feel like there are a hundred-and-one things that my friends and I can do. We are rarely bored.

The other thing that irritates me about coming home to my small town is that everyone is so damn nosy. Of course, I, like any other student home from school, loves bragging about how great Rutgers is and how much I love it and how well I'm doing and blah blah blah. However, there comes a point when I can no longer repeat the same soliloquy before I start feeling super-sad about being away from school and all my best friends. When I'm at school, the conversations I have with my peers are so much more meaningful than the "So, how's school going?" "Oh wow, that's awesome. Good for you!" conversations that I have when I run into old classmates at the gym or my former teachers at the grocery store.

Don't get me wrong, there will always be a special place in my heart for my hometown. It's where I grew up, it's where I became the person I am today, it's where I have made some of the greatest friends of my life and memories that I will never forget. However, going away to a large state university has opened my eyes to all the opportunities and places that I can go to in this lifetime. The way I see it is, this town has been a very important part of my journey through life, but I'm ready for the next stop.