“Where are you from?” That’s the first question you are asked when you step onto a college campus and it’s almost as dreaded as “What’s your major?” Where I go to school it's a rarity to hear that someone is from a city outside of the Midwest. The question that usually follows my answer of New Hampshire is “Well why did you choose to come here if it's so far from home?” Well, the answer to that is simple. I wouldn’t have been happy if I were close to home.

Yes, some people make their college decision off of closeness to home and how often they’d be able to go home but I didn't see that as a factor. In all honesty, I know that I probably would have hated it. There would be no easy way for me to bail out of a problem if I needed a break, it would take some planning if I really wanted to go home and by the time it was planned the problem would probably be gone. Plus if it's easier for you to go home and you do it a lot then it doesn't make home special anymore. Sure some people may not view it as that special to begin with, but for me going home is exciting. Getting out of my state made me appreciate it a whole lot more.

You go to college for the learning experiences whether they be academic or not; hopefully, it’s a good mix of both. If I had not gone far from home I wouldn’t have been able to branch out as much as I wanted to. I liked the fact that I was going to know no one. It was going to force me out of my comfort zone and I would have to become the outgoing person I had always wanted to be. There is no one at college that knows what past me was truly like and it's not that I was a horrible person it's just that I didn’t want to stay in my same bubble for the rest of my life. Growing into your own person is what college is for and you can branch out more if you aren’t restricted by the closeness of home.