Living in a College Town when you're not in College

The people of college towns are pretty fascinating to me, especially in mid-sized towns where you can really get to know things. Some people are there for the obvious, utilitarian reasons...some aren't. Physicists and Milton scholars go grocery shopping with random locals and sorority girls. Each person's stay in this place is unique and can be visibly charted, like rings on a tree.

There are the college students and there are the "lifers", and then there are the mid-grade hangers-on like me who just sort of stay around. The ones who got a job, started grad school, or simply didn't have any better plans.

In the back of our minds we know we might leave eventually, but that decision still lies pretty far off, and it makes life comfortable here in our college town. Ghosts of old friends mix with new circles of  more serious friends with mortgages. We start getting passionate about the quirks of our town and make blogs like The Waco Suck (at first it sucks, and then it sucks you in --which, by the way, is hilarious to me.) We are taken aback and are sort of offended if newcomers don't like it here.

The problem with being a mid-grade hanger-on is that it sort of spoils you for any other way of living. Logan and I might move on in a few years, but in the meantime I have grown attached. Just any town won't do. I've gotten picky.

Getting around Dallas is extremely irritating now, since even an ounce of traffic seems like an outrage. Cities with no houses over 50 years old seem to have zero personality. I can actually feel my soul being crushed by the prospect of commuting. Waco isn't a metropolitan tourist destination, but at least when you're here, you can't mistake it for anywhere else.

You could say it's just about the people, or the fact that going on six years in a place gives you time to find out all the secret nooks and crannies that make it endearing, or that it's because Logan and I began our life here, and it's hard to imagine it against any other backdrop. But I think a big part of why I like it here is simply because it is a "college town." The life of the mind is important here, at least to some people. It is special to be among people who feel intimately connected to the place where they live.

While your college town will always be the same in your memory, the truth is that it changes without you. You change without it. Lately, Logan and I have had to start entertaining plans for the future, and the fact that they might not include this place makes me sad. If/when we ever have to leave Waco, you can bet I'll be looking for another college town to call home.