For 23 years I have lived in the same house, up the same holler, with the exact same neighbors. Sure, I've gone to college, watched my sister get married and move into her new house, and helped raise a puppy-niece. All these aspects of life that seemingly pass one by in the blink of an eye become distant memories once you graduate. The more time that I spend in West Virginia, in the same bedroom I grew up in, I realize how much this state does not want me here.

As I have gone through college and paid attention to the news and legislation, there does not seem like a whole lot of opportunity for young West Virginians. As a teacher, insurance benefits have been cut up to $40 million dollars. Wages in the state are simply not competitive with other states. Most teachers I have worked with are still paying off their student loans 10 years after their graduation date without an end in sight. Even the stigma that teachers go home when the last kid leaves, that weekends are spent Netflix binging the latest release and summers are vacationing in the Cacaos instead of attending Professional Development seminars. I wish this were the case. Teaching in this day and age has become an upward battle to prove yourself over and over. Not to say that the pay in others states is exorbitantly more, but that's a chance you sometimes have to take.

In each new city that I visit or old ones that I frequent due to their beauty, I find reasons upon reasons as to why I would want to live there. Pittsburgh has a Cheesecake Factory (and obviously other things, but I really love cheesecake). Washington, D.C. has museums and cherry blossoms. Not to say West Virginia doesn't have equivalents, but after going to the Meadowbrook Mall a hundred times, you get tired of not seeing a Charming Charlies or a Macy's.

I love being from The Mountain State. I do not like being from "the place Wrong Turn was filmed." Or it automatically being assumed that I have at one point in my life dated my cousin. In a world that is heavily defined by first impressions, I can be quite harrowing to have to explain numerous misconceptions about this state that I love. We need new industries, we need companies wanting to come into our state and rejuvenate what is already here. We need to love our mountains and streams, not downgrade them with sludge and poison.

In 4th grade in Mrs. Stemple's class, we had to make West Virginia notebooks. I borrowed a lot of the material from my older sister, but the information stayed the same. West Virginia's state bird is the Cardinal. Our state flower is the Rhododendron. West Virginia's state fish? The Brook Trout. On Labor Day weekend you will find me in red, white, and green for the Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg. Pieces of West Virginia will never leave me, no matter where I go.