I have lived in the Red River Valley my entire life. Parts of my life in Oslo, other parts in Alvarado, and the rest in East Grand Forks and Grand Forks. I have always considered this area home. It is where I grew up. This is where I was raised. The roads I learned how to drive and the sidewalks I walk every day. It is the town in which I have come to love, but it is also the town in which I find a parasite to my mind.
Don’t get me wrong, Grand Forks is a great place. The people here are great, the University is alright, and the community is admirable. But to me, the longer I stay here, the more I feel myself suffocating and diminishing. Grand Forks is a smallish city. You know people. You remember people. You have/need connections to get anywhere in this city (but I guess this is in every city).
Growing up, I was always an individual that liked to experience new things, meet new people, and try things that I normally would not get to try. This last summer really opened my eyes and my mind to the reality that I am living. There aren’t new people in Grand Forks. There’s not much to do and not much to see (well… for someone who has lived here twenty-one years anyways). I live in repetition daily. I wake up, go to class, interact with the same people, go to work, and repeat. I don’t get to see new surroundings. I don’t get to interact with others that share different values and ideas because everyone that does live here, are all people that I was raised with.
My brother is a senior in high school and is trying to decide which University to attend. While asking for my advice, I highly encouraged him to look at schools not in state. If there is one regret that I have, it’s not going somewhere else for college. I want my brother to see the world. I want him to meet new people. I want him to experience new things in life. I want him to do everything that I didn’t and thoroughly regret, even now as I am about to graduate college.
See, the thing is, Grand Forks does not have much to offer. Yes, it has a University and a well-known hockey team, but what else does Grand Forks have left to offer someone that has lived here their entire life? Maybe from an outsider, Grand Forks has a lot to offer and a lot more experiences for those just now coming to the city, but to me? I have seen the river (even have swam in it once or twice or a handful of times), I have been to enough hockey games to last a life time, I have explored all the random boutiques and scarce art galleries downtown. I am looking for a life that can lead to new adventures every day, a life where I interact with different people every day, and life in which I am not living déjà vu. Grand Forks is a great city but I need something that will offer me internal satisfaction, and sadly, Grand Forks has left me feeling the opposite.
