“So, where are you from?”
This question echoed throughout campus during the first few weeks of my freshman year. Whether it was in orientation groups, discussion sections, frat basements or wherever else I went in the early weeks of the fall of freshman year, I couldn’t escape it. Often sandwiched between “What’s your name?” and “What’s your major?”, this question seemed to be a mutually agreed upon prompt for all introductory small talk at the University of Michigan.
Personally, I dreaded it. My answer wasn’t some sort of exotic, far-off state that sees sunshine for more than three months of the year or the topic of love songs and poetry. I grew up an approximately six-minute drive from my freshman year dorm room, and during my first few months at the University, I was determined to hide the fact that I was going to college in my hometown.
Ever since I started thinking about college, I insisted to anyone and everyone that I was going to an out-of-state school and getting as far away from Ann Arbor as possible. As I finalized my college list at the end of my junior year, I filled it with fancy private schools on the East Coast, pretending that I didn’t see my mom’s brow furrow at the price tag attached to what I considered the ticket to the life I wanted to lead. Famous journalists or writers or politicians or artists or poets didn’t go to big state schools down the street from them; they lived their college years making a name for themselves in fancy apartments in big cities.
As my college decisions and financial aid packages rolled in, I reluctantly put my deposit down at the University of Michigan, feeling disappointed that I wouldn’t get to experience a new college town in the fall. After I allowed myself a few days of pouting, I decided that I was going to make the best of my spot at this school that plenty of other people would gladly take.
Throughout my first semester, my resolve to reinvent myself proved stronger than my inevitable homesickness, and I avoided going home as much as humanly possible — only making the short trip back for holiday breaks and the one time I had the flu. I made new friends from all around the world and found new favorite coffee shops, avoiding the places I frequented in high school. My efforts to convince myself that the distance from my parents was further than it actually was had proven surprisingly effective. If I tried hard enough, the sidewalks I walked down to get to class weren’t the same ones I have been wandering my entire life.
With more than half of each U-M graduating class coming from within the state of Michigan, I imagine many of you might be feeling similarly. Whether it’s a city in Southeastern Michigan or a small town in the Upper Peninsula, going to college close to home can feel like a setback during a time you are supposed to be prioritizing new experiences in new places for the first time. But, it doesn’t have to be.
Throughout my first two years of college, I have realized that, although I am still in the place I have always been, I am nowhere near the same person. When I tried to convince myself that I was somehow “stuck” going to college in Michigan, I accomplished nothing but holding myself back.
As a highschooler growing up in Ann Arbor, I convinced myself that I already knew the ins and outs of college life at the University and my college experience would bore me — since apparently I was already such an expert. I couldn’t have been more wrong. From within campus, life was nothing like I had expected from my lens looking in. If I could go back in time and talk to myself from two years ago, I would tell her to open up to this opportunity that might be a blessing in disguise.
I grew up in the same house my mom grew up in. From kindergarten to senior year, I sat in the same classrooms and read the same books as my grandparents did. My Ann Arbor roots run deep, deeper than I would like sometimes. As someone who is obsessed with the idea of fresh starts and has had an independent streak since I could walk, the idea of going to college in the city I grew up in was not thrilling at first. However, my time at the University has required me to learn to love life as it is, instead of waiting for it to begin.
Whether you live a 10 minute car ride or a 10 hour plane ride away, your college experience at the University will change you in meaningful ways if you let it. While I still ache for a big city where every Saturday night doesn’t feel like a high school reunion, going to college in my hometown has taught me not to rush things. I can live my big city dreams another day. For now, I am here, and I wish I could go back to my senior year self and tell her all of the amazing experiences she will have, all the incredible people she will meet, all the fascinating things she would get to learn and all the wonderful memories she would make two years into college at the school she swore she would never go to.
Summer Managing Editor Mary Corey can be reached at mcorey@umich.edu
The post ‘Where are you from?’ and other questions: Rantings of an Ann Arbor native appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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