Coming from Keavy, a small, hick town in Southeastern Kentucky, you could say I haven't had much chance to experience the world outside my own backyard. Would it change your mind if I told you, I'm choosing not to leave my Small Town U.S.A.?

Through one of the most wonderful programs I've ever had the privilege of being a part of, Upward Bound at Berea College, I got to explore outside my bubble in ways I never thought would be possible. Growing up in a poverty-stricken area of Appalachia, I always wanted to get the heck out of that place. I felt like the mountains I called home were suffocating me. The longer I stayed in them, the longer I felt like I'd never be able to achieve my full potential in my little hometown. So in high school, I started dreaming. I started dreaming about going to New York and working on Wall Street (by this time in my life, I had decided on being an accountant of course), never coming back to my hometown until somebody got married or died (morbid as all get out, I know).

But then came my senior year of high school.

It was 2012. My Upward Bound directors decided to take us to Washington, D.C. for our last hoorah as high-schoolers. I'd never been to a city that big! The drive was a bit of a drag, almost twelve hours on an overnight charter bus, out of Kentucky, into West Virginia and Virginia and ending up at sunrise entering the Washington, D.C. limits. I loved this new adventure I was on! Exploring the monuments (some of my best memories from that trip!), touring the National Holocaust Museum and Arlington National Cemetery (two of the most sobering experiences I've ever had) and ending our days running rampant through the Smithsonian Museums. The days were absolutely everything I could have dreamed about.

But then the night fell.

The nights were full of cityscape sounds and the never-ending hustle and bustle. Alarms and sirens. Car horns and traffic. Things I'd never experienced in my small Kentucky town. I found myself longing for the quiet of my backyard instead of hearing the far-off wail of a siren, to be where I could see the stars outside my window instead of skyscrapers. It was on that trip I realized just how lucky I was to be raised in my hometown. It was on that trip I made the choice to come home after college, to leave my roots right where they had been planted.

-BrittanyNicole