By Julia Kern
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a random weekday, a little over a year ago, I was in my room aimlessly scrolling on my computer through what felt like an endless list of California colleges.
I’m from Fresno, California. If you didn’t know already, Fresno is a city of over half a million people crammed in between dilapidated infrastructure and smelly farmland. So, you may not be surprised that I have been itching to leave Fresno for as long as I can remember.
To me, Fresno never felt like home. Sure, my parents are there, my friends, and all the sites are familiar and nostalgic to me. I’ve just gotten to the point where I felt like I needed a change of scenery.
So naturally, Fresno State was totally out of the question. I wanted to go somewhere far, somewhere I wasn’t familiar with, somewhere nothing like the place I grew up, which is how I landed on Cal Poly Humboldt.
The pictures of the campus immediately caught my attention. I imagined living on a campus in the middle of the forest. If Humboldt isn’t the opposite of Fresno, I don’t know what is. The trees and plants are actually green. The sky is pure blue, instead of that hazy kind of blue I’ve become so accustomed to. It also rains more than twice a year — which is something I still need to adjust to.
That all may sound strange to get excited over, but when you’re from a place that feels like you’re living in a perpetual dust bowl, you would probably like the rain, too.
Now that I’ve been living here for about a month, I’d say I’m liking it here. The change in pace from a concrete jungle to a serene rainforest is something I am more grateful for than I can express in words.
In the beginning, I sorta felt like a background character in a popular TV show, where everyone else seemed like they had everything figured out and I was just some girl trying to fit the mold. I feel fortunate that this community has ended up being so welcoming and friendly. There has always been someone to assure me that I’m doing fine and that I’ll eventually find my place in all this.
So, I’m deciding not to be worried about what these next two years will have in store for me. I will just have to take it day by day, and it will all work out.