I work closing shifts at a fast-food restaurant that’s two miles away from my dorm hall. I don’t have a car, nor do I have someone to chauffeur me back and forth or the money for an Uber every night.

For every shift except Fridays, the city bus comes an hour and a half after my shift ends, meaning that it’s much faster to walk back to my dorm hall from work, which is what I do.

I love walking alone, especially at night. When it’s dark outside, it’s also cool, there are much less people to get in my way and I can jam out to Lindsey Stirling with my earbuds in without someone looking at me like I’m crazy (unless someone in a car drives by and sees me, and which point, I still keep jamming).

I go to school and work in Vermont, the safest state in the United States in which to live. I feel safe when I walk alone at night because there aren’t too many violent crimes in the area. There’s a gas station that the college kids call “Murder Mart” because someone was murdered there in the ‘70s, but other than that, there’s not too much to fear statistically.

I feel safe walking alone at night here in Vermont because I was born and raised in east Anchorage, Alaska, ranked 49 out of the safest states in which to live (and that’s including Washington DC). In the past year alone, there have been numerous murders of young men around my age who were killed in my neighborhood. Some of these people I went to school with. I would never risk walking alone at night in my neighborhood, and the night in Alaska is much longer than in many places throughout the world.

One time during my senior year of high school, I was getting ready for an early Saturday rehearsal of "Macbeth." Although it’s still extremely dark out in the mornings of Alaska in winter, I walked to school alone every morning, including this specific weekend.

I was about an hour from starting my trek when my mother and I heard gunshots down the street. I was confused as to what the sound was until my mother — who was on the floor — grabbed my hand and pulled me down. (No one was killed that night). I haven’t personally heard too many gunshots in my time, but I have heard enough to know not to go out at night alone in my hometown neighborhood unless it was absolutely necessary.

I don’t feel that danger here in Vermont. I feel at ease walking alone at night with my earbuds in, deaf to the rest of the world. And as I was doing that the same night I wrote this article, I started to feel extremely privileged and grateful for this feeling of safety.

Even though I feel much safer walking alone at night in Vermont than I do in Alaska, I still don’t feel 100 percent invincible. I’m a young woman who lives on campus at a college in the United States. As soon as I spent my first night in my dorm room, I was at a high risk of sexual assault. I’m lucky to say that I’ve never experienced sexual assault, but a surprisingly large number of my female friends have, even on my current campus. From word of mouth, I’ve learned that my school doesn’t handle sexual assault cases very effectively (that’s according to a survivor who reported her sexual assault). And with everything in the news, especially relating to the Brock Turner case, I’m constantly reminded that a college-age woman is not safe on any United States campus.

That’s why as I was taking my walk tonight, I at first felt thankful that I felt safe from gun/gang violence as I was walking on the dark sidewalk. But I have a habit of checking behind me every few seconds, and this instinctual motion reminds me that while I’m safe from the kinds of violence that are familiar to me — the type of violence that goes boom — I know full well that as a woman who lives on a college campus, I’m at an increased risk of experiencing an entirely new type of violence - new to me, I mean.

I’m still going to walk alone at night here in Vermont, where I feel much safer than in Alaska. It’s still my main mode of transportation home from work, and the movement of walking relaxes my anxious thoughts. But I need to remind myself, and I want to warn other college-age women like me that also walk alone at night: have your phone on and charged, stay as close to the light as possible, and pick a course and stay on it. As much as I hate it, for women, safely walking alone at night is a privilege that is so often taken away.