The 7 Year Itch

This isn't a post about the movie, or the subject the phrase is supposed to mean (being that after being in a relationship for 6 years it is a trial to not cheat in the 7th or something like that). No this is about the fact that I have been in my college town for 5 1/2 years. Before I leave, it will be a full 6 years of this town, and despite much incentive to stay more, I just couldn't do anything professionally or academically for a 7th year here. Not only is my #2 grad school choice doing a partial in state program here in the fall of '12, but I also have a shot at a full time job where I work that will pay me a professional wage. Both would be exceedingly tempting, if it were anywhere else in the world than where I live.

Why is it I have a hard time staying despite these obvious advantageous incentives?

1) I've never really lived in a town for longer than 6 years. I get an itch to just move someplace different where I am unfamiliar. The world is small, my life is short, I don't want to settle in a town until I'm ready to start a family.

2) This town has no soul. I have tried to make the best of it, but this town has nothing to offer. I just want a book store, someplace I could hang out, and something more than just going to the movies. Not to mention the populace of this town is generally uneducated, and don't support education, but also are completely uncultured and don't make a stab at it.

3) Ending my undergrad is a landmark in my life, seems like the perfect time for change. I'm willing to stick around this place for those few weeks that my classes are actually going on, but I don't want to stay here for another 2 years. I'd freaking kill myself (not really, but I wouldn't really progress as a person very much).

Now I understand the job market sucks. I understand that student loans are crippling. I am not an individual who lies down and takes what stupid things society says I "should" believe, or I "should" do. I intend to specialize in a technological field, a field that despite what the news wants you to believe, is still growing and needs more people to fill the ranks. My plans aren't to work in a library per se, but to program, alter, tweak, and design catalogs, web sites... Even then, this is just for a day job while I continue to compose and travel around the world, and try and make my music a full time job. No, this isn't delusions of grandeaur, I will work myself to the dirt to make this happen, because even though the world economy is tanking, I don't need to go down with it. Money is immaterial, it's imaginary, if I need more I will figure a way to get more. I can market my intelligence, I can learn new tricks to satisfy employers, I can work hard, and even do manual labor. But, if I want this lifestyle, I CANNOT STAY WHERE I AM. Funny when you live in a town where its GDP drops well above national rates (meaning local economy=impossibly poor) that a dream of making decent money, just isn't that realistic.

There are plenty of people my age that make 6 figure incomes, I WILL be one of them before I am 30, and I WILL have traveled to at least 3 continents at that point too. This will happen, but not so long as I live in this town.

So, I do have senioritis, I have an itch to get the hell out of this town, but that's because I want to do fun things, live the life I want, despite society telling me a lower middle class citizen should stay there.

I might sounds like an idealistic college student, but the only thing I have really learned in college is that to get anything you really want in life, you have to work at it. If there is one thing I believe I am good at, it's that I am a good worker.