Issue date: 4/30/07 Section: Aggielife

Media Credit: Ivan Flores — THE BATTALION [Click to enlarge]

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."

Continued...

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