Column:
Defining self is harder in larger community
Published Sept. 26, 2008
I'm a small town girl. I was born and raised in a town with a population of 12,000. It's the type of place where, though it's not common, it's not impossible to get stuck behind a tractor driving down the road.
Growing up in small-town America is a unique experience. I went to school with the same kids for nearly 12 years and I could probably name all 150 or so people in my graduating class. Each year when I met my new teachers, there was a 50-50 chance that they had taught my parents in school. My parents knew all of my friends' families, and they were just as likely to hear the latest gossip at work as I was at school.
In a small town, you grow up with a built-in support system. There are the senior citizens who have lived in one place for their entire lives and who dedicate themselves to their alma mater's sports like a religion. There are your old elementary school teachers who will clip out your photo when it appears in the local paper and mail it to you, just so that you have an extra copy. There are people you don't even know who will stop and congratulate you in the grocery store for something you've accomplished.
In this kind of a tight-knit community, it's easy to establish the type of person you are. People come to recognize you through your accomplishments. They remember the things you've done in your past and they expect things from you in the future. In high school, I established myself. I was a pole-vaulter, I was the homecoming queen and I was a valedictorian.
Everyone knew who I was, and I knew everyone.
But it gets tough living under a microscope, and by the time graduation rolled around I couldn't wait to get out of my small town to go somewhere big and new and full of possibilities, a place where I could meet new people and where nothing was expected of me.
So last fall I began classes at MU, where the enrollment is twice the size of my hometown. I could walk around campus all day without seeing faces that I recognize. I could stay out all night partying, and there would be no one to gossip about me the next day. I could say something ridiculous in class, and no one would ever remember.
No one knew who I was, and I knew almost no one.
Reestablishing my identity was really hard for me, and it's something I'm constantly working on. I'm no longer the pole-vaulter, the homecoming queen or the straight-A student. I'm just a girl trying to get through college and figure out what she wants to do with her life. And in a world where someone will always be smarter than you, better looking than you or more personable than you, it's sometimes hard to imagine how you can excel.
But that's when I feel fortunate to have grown up in a small town. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the anonymity of being at a big school surrounded by big personalities, I can remind myself that at one time, my small community seemed big too. Moving from junior high to high school was at one time a "big" leap for me, but it only took four short years to find out who I was within those parameters. Eventually I will find my niche here at MU. And then I'll have to start all over again once I graduate.
It's OK though, you have to start small before you can conquer the world. And I feel like my small town was as good a place as any.