City Life v. Suburban Life

This past week I went on 2 college tours, 1 school was located in a college town and the other was smack dab in the middle of a city. While I was visiting the college town school which was University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I felt like I was right back in downtown Naperville. With basically no college kids, the town had the feel of a quaint laid back town that’s been around for centuries, after a little bit more exploring we found an area resembling the woods and farms that dotted the landscape, the amount of rural space in this town so close to Detroit was ironic since the city is merely an hour away. Later on that week I took a spur of the moment tour of DePaul University’s Loop campus. The Loop campus is about a 10 minute walk from Union Station in downtown Chicago so of course there are a ton of people trying to get to a million different destinations. My downtown journey started at the route 59 train station in Naperville, as the train jerked over the tracks I remembered that I wasn’t going to a quaint college town isolated from the hustle and bustle of the real world, I was headed full fledge into the city. When I got out of Union Station I was greeted by honking, yelling, and the thick haze of pollution in the air. After getting lost a few times (I was taking this trip solo) I finally made it to the Loop Campus attached to a Barnes&Noble, the first thing I noticed was that the campus considered its hallways the streets of downtown Chicago and to thrive in this school and city you have to be thick skinned and ready for the rawness. Although I preferred the college town campus in Michigan, I can understand the advantages of going to a school in the city. While the city may not be the cleanest and friendliest place in the world, the odds of interacting with a diverse set of people are greater, there is always something to do, and being in a cut throat environment tends to bring out the best in people.  With that being said, I was able to reach the conclusion that my years of being a suburban girl will not end any time soon.