College Lessons: Entry 2

Lesson 2
Lesson 2 was an interesting lesson to learn, but a completely necessary one. I've finally come to appreciate and take pride in where I'm from. All my life I've lived in the same place. Luckily I've had a wonderful family that travels all the time so I got out of here quite often but I think part of that fed into my lack of loyalty to where I was raised. I always had that peaceful feeling when I came home from my many adventures but I still wasn't happy to be living in Utah. I always told myself I'd leave.
Now I realize I didn't go out of state to school so I didn't gain as big of an appreciation as I could have. However, I was surrounded by people who weren't from Utah all the time that would constantly "diss" or make negative comments about it and I found out that that offended me. The best way I can relate it is to say that it's like when someone disses your family member. It's okay when you do it but not when other people do. And I'm not trying to say that I resented or hated my new out of state friends I just felt like they were missing the big picture and it made me sad. Surely I've made tons of passes and insults about my native state but those were always to fellow Utahns who understood but here I was chatting it up with people from Idaho and Colorado who I had previously seen as fellow "lame" states haha. I mean honestly, Idaho, Colorado, and Utah are all basically the same. They really had no room to talk about how awesome their states were. We're all lame in our own way but we all have great things about ourselves and it's hard to see that all the time. By the end of the year I had gotten more used to it and had decided that they had lived in Utah for 8 or 9 months or whatever it was and could complain about how sucky Utah was all they wanted to. Regardless, I left my freshman year of college feeling an appreciation for where I was raised and knowing that it's made me into the person I am today and I truly am grateful for Salt Lake City/Cottonwood Heights/Midvale/Sandy/wherever else the government wants to say I live.