Why go to UWSP?
My friend in high school asked me.
“Everybody is literally going everywhere else” she said with snark.
“That is kind of the reason I want to go there. I want to get away from all this *gestures vaguely about me*
But deep down I was going for the familiarity and proximity to home. I was both scared out of my mind and riveted to be be on my own. Nobody to tell me what to do, tell me what I can and cant be. But also nobody to help me when I get stuck or nobody to be there at the drop of a hat when I mess up. Granted my support base was only 20 minutes away, college was still a huge step and 20 minutes seemed like 20 states when I was leaving my cat and the very room where I grew up in.
Stevens Point was a familiar place because both of my sisters when to UWSP. We visited them almost every Friday and would take them out to eat at Hilltop or Culvers. I loved Friday nights when I would get home from school and my parents and I would go drive to Point to deliver mail and leftovers to my sisters. Black eyed Peas sang “Tonight is going to be a good night”, and the highway is full of cars traveling to their weekend destinations. The nice thing about getting away to Point was I was comforted by the fact we weren't going to have any awkward run-ins with people we knew.
I liked SP because it wasn't rapids. it didn't have that rapids vibe. and I knew I would be saving money by going to UWSP rather than another UW.
My mom and dad don’t know this but the summer before I started college I started skipping church to come to point on a Sunday afternoon. I told them I got a job cleaning a bar near campus and I would go buy a deli sandwich and a blue raspberry soda from Trigs and take my sisters dog for a walk down to the river. Those moments leading up to my first day at UWSP solidified my already solid decision to come to Point. I could be what I want to be, do what I want to do, and I would eventually find that now would be the time where I would discover who I really was.