It hit me at the end of my junior year of high school. This suffocating, anxious feeling like I was tired of waiting for my life to start. I was ready to leave my hometown and move on to what lay beyond graduation. I was privileged enough to never doubt that I was going to college, and it would be a four-year school away from home. Privileged, but also prepared. My grades were good; my extracurricular activities and volunteer work were all ready to be logged onto my resume. My college essay topic was swirling around in my head. Staying in my hometown – Newburgh, NY – was just not an option. No matter what, or who, I was leaving behind.
My hometown has this culture of bashing that comes with it. All my friends and I are guilty of insulting Newburgh in one way or another. My friends and I were from that privileged group that could talk down about Newburgh because we knew we were leaving anyways. But my junior year I started dating someone who introduced me to a different group of friends. It just so happened that these were people who wouldn’t be able to go away to college at the end of high school. Some didn’t have the money. Others didn’t have the grades. Others didn’t have parents who planted the idea of college in their heads at such a young age. In fact, a few of them were the first in their families to even graduate high school. Even they insulted my hometown. The first thought that always came to my mind was “if you don’t like it, then leave.” I realize now that applying that logic to this new group of friends was completely ignorant. They couldn’t leave if they wanted to.
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The first time I came home from college, I really thought I was hot stuff. Even though I was so relieved to finally be home, even though I was homesick and had missed my parents and friends. It was this amazing feeling to know I was living my dream and succeeding at that. I spent time with the friends who hadn’t went away to school. Some were working, some were going to the community college. For the first time, I felt out of place at home. Like these people were stuck in time, and I could no longer relate to them. It took many trips of going away and coming back to realize what was happening.
Those of us who are lucky enough to go away to college, we are initially so wrapped up in our new lives, in this “opening up” of the world, that we forget where we come from. Then we go back to where we come from, and bring this newfound entitlement with us. It’s hard to think about privilege in a way that’s not entirely negative. But in this case, it is truly unintentional. We come home from college and don’t think about how we’re wielding that privilege in that faces of the people we left behind. Some of us even that take that privilege to the extreme, spending those first years of college coasting through class and partying all the time. We don’t think about how different our lives would be if we couldn’t have left.
It took me a long time to get to that realization. It is only occurring to me now in graduate school as I am reflecting on my identity and how my hometown has contributed so much to who am I and the sociological questions I have. Now, I am inspired by my friends who are working their way out of Newburgh. They didn’t have the same means as my original group of friends and I, so yes, it’s taking longer. But they’re doing it. There are plenty of people in Newburgh who never make it out. I know now that I left so I would have something to bring back. There is so much I want to give back to my home. When the time comes, I will.
