It's a big world out there and we've heard about it since we were kids. We were always told about this far off "real world" and, as a little kid living in a town of around 1,500 people, this real world sounded terrifying and incredible. As my classmates and I grew older, we never paid much attention to this "real world." As far as we knew, life outside of the county line was just about the same as it was inside. We came from towns where the phrase "everybody knows everybody" isn't an exaggeration and our track shirts said "We run faster than small town gossip." That was life to us and many didn't need it any other way. Then, we graduated.

Once we got into colleges, trade schools, or even the military, we began to realize the many differences between our little towns and this enormous world we would soon become acquainted with. We realized that for most people, as surprising as it sounds, there is more to life than cattle and cornfields. I doubt many of us realized how sheltered we were or how isolated our hometowns could be until we actually left. We began to realize things about this new world.

From my own experiences living in a "college town," I realized a few of these things within about two months of life on campus. There aren't many heavy differences, but the small ones can add up. These things can be as silly as having nearly tamed squirrels on campus to having places to eat everywhere around town. So many things are different when you leave the comfort of your little town. You start to meet incredible people that break through the boundaries of what people at home would call "normal" and along the way, maybe discover how you aren't quite as "normal" as you thought.

Living in a small town, your friends are often determined by the people you talked to when you were around five years old. They play a role in shaping who we become as adults, but the friends you make after high school tend to be more similar to you. These new friends will still shape who you are, but you don't have a history with these friends. These new friends are made because of their personality, dreams, sense of humor, or even the faces they make during lectures. This establishes a desire to create a new history.

Another thing we (very suddenly) realize is one that I wish wasn't the case. As much as some of us don't want to admit it, my high school is filled with people with like minds. And a large percent of these people are white. Diversity in small towns is almost non-existent to the point that the floor I lived on in my dorm was more diverse than my graduating class. There are very few things that I would change about my hometown, but this is definitely one of them. It can be difficult to fully understand the world without diversity. After a while, different points of view become echoes of those around us.

Although there may be extreme differences between your hometown and wherever you go after high school, you can still find comfort, and maybe even a little bit of a home, in both. The experiences you have in college will follow you for the rest of your life. You may have late night talks with friends and roommates, listen to classic rock in the biology lab before finals, or take a walk through the town after catching a musical put on by the theater majors. You'll carry them with you long after you graduate and, if you're lucky, you'll come back home with a few new ideas.