What it’s like going to college in the town you grew up in

When I was applying for colleges my senior year, I desperately did NOT want to go to Rutgers. Of all the places where I thought I would end up after graduation, Rutgers was the last place I wanted to be.

See, I was born in New Brunswick (shoutout to Saint Peter’s) and grew up in Piscataway, in a house just a few neighborhoods away from Busch Campus, and just a 7-minute drive from Livingston. New Brunswick and Piscataway are saturated with Rutgers, from neighbors with “R” bumper stickers on their cars, RU Express being accepted literally everywhere, to pictures of the football team being mounted on the billboards along Route 287. I’d even say that if you’re from Piscataway, you probably know more PHS alumni who go to Rutgers than not.

Even going to school was Rutgers focused. In middle school, if you didn’t have a shirt for gym, our teacher would pull out a bright red – sorry, scarlet – Rutgers Football t-shirt for you from the back of her office in the locker room that seemed to be a storage room for thousands more of them.

At Piscataway High, we shared a radio station, 90.3 FM The Pulse, with who else but Rutgers’ own 90.3 FM The Core. Piscataway even has a conjunction expos program with Rutgers, allowing you to take expos for a full year as a senior and get Rutgers credit for it (and not gonna lie, that part actually is pretty cool and I’m sure students from other high schools who go to Rutgers would have liked that same opportunity).

My friends and I have had experiences where creepy frat guys have hung around the school trying to invite high school students to party at RU, and I know plenty of people who took them up on their invites. To top off that whole experience, my commencement ceremony took place in the RAC, and even our Project Graduation was in the College Ave Gym.

Spot the R.

Basically, when you live in Piscataway, you’re both a Chief and a Scarlet Knight, even if you end up going to college somewhere else. When you’re chanting “P-way, U Kno” at Chiefs football games, you also know how to scream, “RU, rah, rah!” with passion.

At the time, all of that was so annoying. And it seemed like Piscataway was so uneventful and average, a bland suburbia where everyone was the same. It was my ultimate cliched teenage dream to get out of my small town and go to school in a city and live a Carrie Bradshaw type of life.

Best friends that go to college together, stay together

Because my life is the way it is though, all the other schools I applied to rejected me except Rutgers, so I had no choice. But now that I’m here, it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s not bad at all.

I mean, commuting sucks a lot, but living five minutes away from the Yellow Lot makes it a whole lot easier compared to other people. Although when I tell people where I commute from, I get some looks of sympathy. In spite of that, my family is saving almost $12,000 by not living on campus. And as someone who’s grown up here, I know all the best places in the surrounding area to hang out, shop, or get food. I know my way around New Brunswick and Piscataway, and very rarely do I get lost.

One of my bigger concerns when I committed to Rutgers was having to be stuck seeing the very people in high school that I wanted to forget about, but even though plenty of us go here, there’s thousands of other students from all over the world on campus with all kinds of interests. Rutgers is HUGE. I see Piscataway people all the time, but I realized that I don’t actually have to interact with them.

With all that being said, even though I’m basically going to school in the comfort of my own home, Rutgers is still taking me out of it. I’m trying new things, I’m doing what I want and I’m working hard, which is something that means more to me than living a fantasy life in the city. Going to the 60th best university in the world tends to do that to you, I think.

These days, whenever there’s a football game, I’m reminded of the chilly fall nights my best friend Caroline and I used to sit outside in her backyard with a bonfire going, just two blocks away from High Point Solutions Stadium,  listening to the sounds of the marching band play and the screams and shouts of Scarlet Knights fans. The only difference now is that we’re both apart of the action.

Although I used to look at being from Piscataway with shame, I’m prouder than ever to bleed both black and gold, and scarlet.