POTTSTOWN PA – The world is decidedly not alright right now with Kiersten, a Pottsgrove High School graduate who currently attends West Chester University, and on Wednesday (May 12, 2010) she was specific about her anxiety.
“I want to get away,” she wrote in a post on “Hazelnut Dreams,” the blog she shares with a friend. “I want to run screaming from all of this. Because this town (Pottstown PA) is a black hole. People come here, and they never leave.”
“And I’m sorry,” she adds. “I don’t mean to be rude, or to insult, or anything. But I need something different. Something far away from here. I need to run so far away, that nobody knows my name, and I need to never look back.”
Photo from Clipart.com
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So many young men and women feel that way about our small town, yet when asked they really know nothing about it, its history, its people, or how it fits into the world.
Pottstown was during many different times a source of much pride for its people. We built the steel for the “Golden Gate Bridge” here. General Washington rested and regrouped after the battle of Brandywine in Pottsgrove and Fagleysville. A captured British spy once was housed at Cutillo’s. Sanatoga raceway was known throughout the region as a fast track. During WWII many fighter aircraft and bomber parts were built here and helped win the war. The canal along the Schuylkill was a prime freight mover to western parts of the state from Philadelphia, as a major port.
Try not to run to fast, and too hard, for there will come a time when you’ll look back and wonder “why did I think it was so bad …” When the big old world slaps them hard, they realize, hey it wasn’t so bad.
I think many of us can understand her frustration at wanting to get away when we go to college. The one thing I did notice in reading this entry is that she hasn’t graduated and actually started to live at West Chester. As a Pottsgrove grad and student at WCU, I can tell you from experience that you don’t feel nearly as close to home as you may be.
My advice to her would be to give it a chance. I rarely see any of my classmates from Pottsgrove around campus and one of the great (or new, as compared to high school) things about college is – you dont have to see them if you don’t want to because there are so many different people around campus. Maybe it will be too close to home and you’ll want to transfer – but at least you will have tried it out.
Sometimes college and life gets to be too much and you find yourself WANTING to go home, just to breathe. Don’t run away from that too quickly.