Home, sweet home

Aggies discuss the pros and cons of city and country living

By: Jason Deuterman

Posted: 4/30/07

For some students, to reminisce on home is to meditate on the sweet vegetative scent of an open field or the sensation of a clean, crisp breeze as it rushes past eager cheeks. For others, it is the rural atmosphere where for generations, a handful of families have gathered in the same small church with the tall steeple and chipping white paint each Sunday morning. Yet, when Jessica Cunningham's thoughts wander toward home, it is skyscrapers and busy streets that enter her mind and give her solace.

"It's strange coming from New York City where there's trees and tall buildings and to College Station where there's nothing," the junior history major said. "It's so flat."

Cunningham said without Texas A&M and the student population, she would find it incessantly difficult to live in such a small town.

"How is there even 40,000 people here? (College Station) is so small! There is no way I could live here without all of the students," Cunningham said. "It's not a city unless it has at least five buildings over 30 stories tall."

Yet, students like Payton Kane, a freshman political science major, find themselves scoffing at the notion that College Station is a small town.

"It always makes me laugh when someone from Dallas-Forth Worth area or Houston or any big city say how small College Station is," Kane said. "The town closest to me had 115 people. I had to drive an hour and half just to go to the closest mall."

Kane said to him, College Station is a city.

"Anything that you need you can get here," Kane said. "Back where I'm from, if you needed a doctor for anything other than the common cold, you had to drive to Amarillo."

The size of a town is not the only aspect that causes students to feel disgust toward rural Southern living. Jacqueline Cisneros said it was a bizarre transition moving from Houston to College Station due to the small-town culture and lifestyle.

"You have to adjust to a lack of culture within this town," the junior American studies major said. "You appreciate more of the culture that you had at home. Everyone laughed because I had never shopped at a Wal-Mart before until I came to College Station."

Cisneros said the closed-mindedness of small town, rural society is one of the main reasons why she prefers the city.

"It really seems like small town people are more closed-minded because they haven't experienced other cultures in the same way that someone in the city would," she said. "In order to be a well-rounded person, you have to be exposed to different people, and my experience with small towns is that you don't get that aspect."

Cisneros said for many students - including herself - it is often a struggle in College Station and other small towns to feel accepted when one has different beliefs than those generally accepted.

"People in bigger cities are so much more accepting of other people in that you don't have to put on a face for anybody," Cisneros said. "That's something that I have really had to struggle with in College Station. It will always be a shock to me how someone can be so negative to someone else based on their beliefs. I think that it is really sad."

Cunningham said even the weekend entertainment scene is on a wholly different spectrum than what she grew up with in the Big Apple.

"I've been clubbing since I was 16," Cunningham said. "I kept hearing about 'The Hall,' but what they failed to mention was that it was a Texas country music dance hall. I told my boyfriend, 'This is not a dance club, it's a dance hall. Learn the difference!'"

In fact, many of the acceptable past times in which some students partake in within College Station cause Cisneros to question what some would consider fun.

"There was one time when I went out to a classier place on Northgate, and when I walked out, I saw guys dipping into bottles," Cisneros said. "Sometimes I just don't get it."

Kane said many of the ideas that city folk have of rural living are cliché and in some circumstances, far from the truth.

"Living in a small town, the perception is different from those looking in," Kane said. "The typical culture is all about community. The highlight of the week might be a sports event or performance or just going camping and starting a fire somewhere."

Kane admitted small town life is more conservative than that of the city, but said that for one to say the citizens of a small town are not accepting would be a falsity.

"People are more conservative and just have a very elemental way of thinking of things. For example they're very religious, and faith is at the forefront of everything," Kane said. "But the people are extremely friendly and always accepting. It's just that sometimes we find things objectionable, and it takes people a long time to accept it."

Regardless, it is the feeling of something right out of a novel that keeps Kane going home.

"In my town, we really have all the elements of a William Faulkner novel with old Southern families," Kane said. "Though unfortunately, a lot of rural life is on its last limbs - those antebellum concepts."