Topic- Small Town Culture vs. College Town

Topic:

Where I'm from is a small village named Westville, Ohio, not to be confused with Westerville, Ohio. It's located between Dayton, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio. My county is where life is truck/ tractor pulls, derby races, and when the year revolves around the Champaign County Fair. I went to Graham High School, named after the founder of 4-H, A.B. Graham, who was born in my county. We were known nationally for one thing and that was wrestling. When we played other schools in football and basketball most school's student sections chose "redneck" themes to make fun of our social structure. I graduated with around 120 other students in my class. Despite the small size of the classes Graham Local Schools district is one of the largest in Ohio in area. Covering small towns (including my own) combining in area comparable to the size of Columbus, Ohio. To put it into perspective, my elementary bus ride was a hour and forty minutes long but I only lived 15 minutes away from the school. We drove tractors to school, went square dancing in PE class, and had a course for agriculture sciences course that consisted of raising chickens in the field behind the school. There was two groups of  "cool" people, ones that played sports and the others that showed livestock and whose parents farmed.

My school was not diverse in the slightest. I graduated with one bi- racial student and the rest of us were Caucasian. You knew everyone and their families and who they voted for because there was only three families that voted democrat. Everyone either was not religious because they worked on Sundays/ farmed or were practicing Christians. No one admitted to being gay because it was looked down on in our area. We lacked diversity and never learned or experienced more than one side of world- wide issues. These combined reasons I feel contributed to my culture shock of moving to Athens, Ohio for college at Ohio University.

I loved Ohio University the first time I stepped on campus in the 6th grade. I was heavily involved in the marching band in my high school which practically mirrored the Marching 110. Although I applied to other colleges, I knew this was my first choice with the main reasons for being a part of the Marching 110 and the Communication school. I was ecstatic getting accepted and basically had everything packed for three months coming up to my move-in.

When I got on campus I lived by myself for a week, we