The Smell of Academia

I was on my way to Boston and the car ride and the sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach just reinforced how far away it really was. I still hadn’t figured out exactly why I thought the city so special, special enough to grant me living there. True, it was bigger that Aberdeen, but then again, just about any organized village you pulled out of a hat could fulfill that qualification. I just felt that it was, home to my college, Boston College, the next step towards making something of myself. I understand that I the same degree could be gained elsewhere, but it was the atmosphere that sold me. It was full of the kind of people with who I’d rather spend my time; intellectual, open minded, artistic people, the kind of people that were pretty much a rarity back home.

Other college towns were known to have the same kind of people; Boston just seemed to have more of them. It had the smell of academia and cultured young people all over it and I loved that. You know what they say about small towns; that the people there have small minds, right? Most people try to refute that statement, claiming it to be all lies, but I think I would know considering I had spent my whole life there. It was the truth to some extent. There were people who didn’t fit that description, I mean, I’d like to think of myself as more than small minded, but there were a great majority of people who out shadowed us. They were the kids who refused to speak with proper grammar, flew the confederate flag on their pick-up trucks despite our lack of being anywhere remotely near the south, and made constant racist comments about groups of people of which they had never once met a member. They were the people who never strived for anything better in their lives, only settling for whatever we there right in front of them. I can understand people who can’t afford college or simply don’t believe it to be the right choice for them for whatever reason, but the handful of kids who graduated years before me, yet still sit with their skateboard on main street corner with no jobs and plans to contribute anything to society apart from their graffiti masterpieces, they made me angry whenever I drove by and just saw them sitting there. I don’t consider myself and elitist by any means. I don’t really wish to look down upon people, but I just felt it a waste of whatever potential they may have held. They could have done great things with their lives, but they’ll never know thanks to how much they limited themselves.

I can’t just throw all of the blame on people my own age; adults were just as responsible for small town America’s bad name. I suppose it’s a never ending cycle; close minded kid turns into a close minded adult only to raise more close minded kids if there is no outside factors to influence them otherwise. In fact when I first old my parents that I wanted to move to Boston, my father had a near heart attack. He went on a tangent on how it was the most liberal city imaginable and was greatly responsible for the downfall of America. I promised him that I’d think for myself and vote Republican (oxymoron intended) when the time came just to calm him down a bit. I was pretty much politically neutral, but at least Boston would give me a different perspective to try out for a while and sometimes that’s all a person really needs in order to make up their mind.

I was just different from a lot of the people back home, hence why I was never a big fan of the place. I had some really good friends, obviously, and I wouldn’t have considered them at all like the type of people I described. But on a personal level, I had never really found a solid place where I felt like I fit in; I had different interests, different priorities, than the most of the people around me. Some were the same, but then again I liked reading classic novels and poetry, and watching old movies. I had unintentionally converted Finn to the same ways in regards to that. I liked things reminiscent of days past, back when things were a little more simple; old forgotten clothes tossed from someone’s attic and music played from records rather than cds, or even better, straight from the piano. I had always wondered whether I had been brought into the world at the wrong time or the wrong place. It was a safe assumption that given more people, there were more chances of finding that right place for me and that, that was something for which I had been looking forward for quite some time.

I saw moving away from home as an opportunity, not only to learn all of the academic book related stuff because that was a given, but a time to finally be allowed to be exactly the person I wanted to be, the person who had been trapped inside of me by all of the limitations of home. I was hoping to be happier there. Rather than focusing on all of the things that I could potentially lose, I was going to focus on what all I could gain; not about Finn or losing touch with each other, not about the things that I was leaving behind, but the things that were waiting ahead of me. This thing called optimism; I figured it was worth a try. Look forward, don’t look back.