I started writing on this blog a year ago this month specifically to talk about my trip to California to visit colleges. It was my junior year then, and I was in the midst of all sorts of exciting things. I had just gotten my driver's license a month earlier (third time's the charm). My book had just been released. My laptop was barely a week old. And the best part of it all--I was taking a college girl to prom.

A lot happens in a year, but the most prominent of changes is the fact that I've since received replies to the colleges I applied to. In the irony of all ironies, all the schools I visited last spring I either didn't wind up applying to (that would be UCLA and CalArts) or didn't get accepted (that would be the University of Southern California). I applied to other colleges in California like Stanford, which rejected me and then told me that they "shared the disappointment with me" (don't worry, I'm sure my sixty dollar application fee is going to help them get over it). The only college I got into that's in California was Chapman University, a private school in Orange County that was recommended to me by a friend of mine around Christmas time. The other acceptance came from the University of Arizona, a back up school I had applied to at a whim.

Now it comes down to either Chapman or the UofA (I can't call it "AU" - apparently that's an "east coast" thing). With Chapman I would have to transfer into their film program. The UofA doesn't have a film program. Both schools are offering me financial aid that would effectively make them cost the same amount of money annually. Of course, with the UofA the housing is cheap enough that I could get an apartment and not have to live on campus.

Either way, once I graduate I will be heading to a college that will be the farthest west that any Terryville High School student has gone immediately after graduating, beating the previous record of Pennsylvania by a long shot. None of my fellow classmates (soon to be former fellow classmates) are going anywhere near warmer climates. In fact, most of them aren't leaving Connecticut at all.

I wonder what separates them from me. What makes them content to stay in the same state they've spent their entire lives in and what makes me want to be the farthest I can possibly be without leaving the continental United States. It might be money, but after all is said and done I'll probably be paying the same amount for tuition that they'll be paying. What is it about this place that makes them want to be here? What do they see that I don't? Whenever they've asked over the last several months about the colleges I applied to they often asked me, "Why so far away?" But I always asked them, "Why not?"

I suppose it's that small town mentality. The fear of a big, crazy, potentially dangerous unknown world that they're diving into. After spending almost two decades of knowing everyone and being comfortable with where they are they've now become too afraid of losing it all, of risking it all, of throwing it all away. I wonder if that means they have something that I don't. I certainly have no qualms about leaving. I won't be crying on graduation and won't be making any tearful speeches about how much I'm going to miss high school.

Perhaps they understand something about this world we live in that I simply can't comprehend.

Or, just maybe, it's the other way around.