COLUMN: Going incognito at college

I’ll be honest; sometimes I get a kick out of playing the out-of-state student card. Let’s face it; I’m so busy that writing this column is technically serving as a means of procrastinating five other class assignments. When your life is that dismal, you have to make your own fun. I’m not ashamed.

Besides, I’m not necessarily being dishonest when I tell new friends stories about my hometown or old friends tales of my new town. I’m just knowingly presenting some of the more extreme realities of my two very different environments.

For example, I come from a city frequently featured on various “Top Ten Worst…” lists. The most recent was a top five rating on the Forbes “Ten Most Miserable American Cities.” I didn’t even know they had a list for that. It’s undeniably hilarious, then, that I now live in a town where the most exciting thing on the police scanner is a reported stolen car whose owner just forgot where he parked. My college friends think I’m from the hood, and my pals back home think I’m attending lectures in a village consisting of one college campus and seven bars.

Come to think of it, I never had to say much back home for my friends to assume I regularly dine on buffalo jerky under seven feet of snow. In fact, they’re more surprised to discover we residents of Vermillion have access to a Walmart. Well, the joke’s on them, because not only have they gotten two feet more snow than we did this year, but they’re also paying several thousand dollars more for their degree than I am. Besides, I haven’t been able to find buffalo jerky anywhere. That must be a West river thing.

Despite my frequent whining over homesickness, there are a lot of benefits to coming to the University of South Dakota from out-of-state. In my case, it’s gobs cheaper and statistically safer (assuming you don’t count the treacherous 12-hour winter drives during breaks). But even better than these is the chance to take my pre-college experiences and put them in the context of a bigger picture. This is true of most college students, but particularly those of us who are far from home. It’s one thing to visit a town on vacation or a campus tour, but a whole different beast when you live there nine months out of the year.

When Mom and Dad are a little more than a text message away, you start to learn not only what your professors are presenting in class, but also how to deal with real-life struggles you’ll probably encounter more often than a 20-page research paper. You meet all sorts of different and interesting people from varied backgrounds and experience many more modes of thought than you might back home. You’re able to benefit from a whole different set of opportunities, and you’re able to grow as an individual apart from your past and actively form your future.

Yet, while all this is happening and you adjust to your new environment, you might also see where you came from in a whole new light. Take me for example. I’ll be the first to tell you that my hometown is a pot-hole ridden nest of bad drivers and purse-snatchers. Add in the lack of opportunities nearby schools offered in my chosen field of study, and I had no qualms with high-tailing it to a quiet and quaint little town in South Dakota. And for the most part, I haven’t been disappointed. Still, I find myself counting down the days until I can go home again, and I bristle a little when anyone who hasn’t lived there observes my hometown’s faults. Not until I went away did I understand how much home meant to me. With all its flaws, it’s still where I grew up, and all the people I love most in the world are there — my mom and dad, my extended family, friends I’ve had so long they feel more like siblings, teachers who encouraged me to pursue the dreams that led me here. Plus, there’s a Chipotle. It’s like Qdoba, but better.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve been able to realize all the reasons I have to go back home in addition to all the opportunities that keep me coming back to USD every semester. I’ve been able to put my past in perspective and experience a place totally new. If you’re new to USD and concerned you’ve made a miserable mistake — or even if you’re preparing to graduate from our university’s hallowed halls and unsure of where to go from here — I’d like to give you this food for thought: Don’t rule out the benefits of a change in scenery. I won’t say the process is easy, but it’ll teach you a lot about life, people and yourself.

Plus, you get to enjoy the flexibility that the I’m-not-from-around-here persona allows in your story telling. When you’re pulling all-nighters two days out of spring break, you’ll need all the cheap humor you can get.