A good fourth of my bedroom floorspace is currently taken up by filled bags and storage bins waiting to be loaded into a car and actually get put to use. I’ve got an upgraded laptop arriving at the beginning of August and numerous niche band posters on my eBay watchlist. A pristine double room in one Johnson Hall awaits five hours away. It feels too good to be true.
One month left.
My anticipation towards heading off to Kent has only been rising recently. So is the anxiety. I’m going off to Ohio, and Ohio is a state currently best known for being a place that ten year old girls have to escape from if they want to get abortions after being raped, so I can’t help but feel…weird…about it. Especially when I get to see people literally flat out say not to go to colleges in states that crack down on abortion, which, despite being aimed at the peanut gallery and not me personally, make me paranoid as hell. Ah, the internet.
Back in the protesty heyday of the swinging sixties, Kent State was considered a “liberal oasis” in a cesspool of rednecks that I can’t imagine being not too dissimilar from the cesspool of rednecks I get to experience living where I have my whole life. Pennsylvania? “Liberal”? Really? When a house a few blocks down from me boasts a cutesy cartoon cutout of No. 45 (seriously) and a “Not My President” sign in the front lawn, I think not. When I say that Ohio feels like a home away from home, I mean that in both the best and worst ways possible.
I tried for college in my supposedly libby home state. It didn’t exactly work out. I actually got accepted into a school not very far from my home base that my parents always dreamed for me to attend. It is much more traditionally prestigious than Kent and also happened to support the draft during the Vietnam War (no kidding). Their admitted student day event opened with possibly the most boring, statistics filled PowerPoint slideshow known to man, one that not even the parents should have had to sit through, never mind the kids. I did not retain most of its pie chart-laden glory. But I do remember the main emphasis of the power-dressing young female presenter’s speech on the school’s well-rounded curriculum: that it would help “market” students to future employers. She then went on to highlight all the shiny big name corporations graduates of the school had entered careers at. What a reason to get an education—so that your parents can smile at your hefty paycheck and how charming it is that you work for Google or Disney. Unlike the squeaky clean cardboard cutout of a college kid that exists inside the heads of people like that, I’m not aiming to stay in a certain lane to make the faceless head honchos I’m apparently supposed to be pleasing feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I may please some people as I make my way down the highway of life, but my trip is mine. I would rather not have someone who thinks they know more about my life than I do try to make life-altering decisions for me. Sound familiar?
I could go on about the multitude of reasons why I’ve chosen Kent State, but I’m not in the mood. I don’t feel the need to ‘prove’ my decision to anyone, and I feel comfortable not having that burden. I was granted the ability to take the chance that I wanted to take, and it would be silly to throw it away for something subpar and unfulfilling.
It’s my choice, and I’m sticking to it. Having few freedoms left, I feel strangely proud of that.
