When you grow up in a small town everybody knows everybody and everybody is related. Gossip travels fast and there are often few secrets. Your graduating class is small and consists mainly of kids you’ve been going to school with since kindergarten.

Every weekend in the fall, the entire town goes out to support the high school football team. It’s physically impossible to go to the grocery store without running into five people you know. The concept of “running in to grab a few things” does not apply in your small town because the next thing you know you’ve been standing in aisle seven talking to your best friend’s grandmother for 45 minutes. When you grow up in a small town, going away to college is absolutely essential.

It’s good to get away. In fact, it’s almost a necessity. When you spend your whole life going to school with the same kids, divided into their various cliques, you cannot wait to get away. Going away to college is a fresh start, full of new faces, and new friendships. You’ll miss your best friends terribly but you’ll feel a sense of relief when you realize the cliques you hated in high school are no longer a part of your life.

College is a whole new world. People are more accepting and less judgmental. Who you were in high school does not matter once you get to college. The people you would never have been friends with in high school may become some of your best friends in college. I can vouch for that as my college best friend was a high school cheerleader and in high school that was a clique I did associate with. In high school, I mostly hung out with the people on my sports teams. My best friends and I all played the same sports. In college, I am friends with a variety of people from a variety of different high school cliques. When you come from a small town college gives you a chance to broaden your horizons. You meet people from all over and become more cultured. College is the place you’ll make friendships that will last a lifetime.

However, that is not to say your high school friendships won’t last just as long. After being away from your small town for a few months, you will actually start to miss it. You’ll miss home cooked meals, your bed, football games, your favorite places in town, and your friends. When you do finally return home, Thanksgiving weekend, you will see everyone you know at the annual Thanksgiving Day Football Game. The whole town will be there including all the kids you haven’t seen since graduation. You’ll catch up with the ones you’ve missed and disregard the ones you didn’t. You will realize how happy and content you are being back in your small town, and you’ll be even more surprised when you realize you actually might have missed this place. Over the years these feelings may change and you may decide that you cannot wait to get out of your town. Regardless, college is a refreshing change of pace that every small town kid needs to experience and in the end we all know the road that will lead us back home again.