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Well, I'm back from my whirlwind trip to University Land.

It has been a really busy week around here. My sister graduated from college on Friday night so my parents and grandparents were in town and I was spending a lot of time with them. My siblings and I even talked our parents into going tubing on the river with us on Saturday, which was a lot of fun.
Then Sunday, Mom and I headed up to University Land. Mostly it felt surreal being there. I just kept thinking, "I can't believe I'm going to live here. This is going to be home pretty soon." I'm going to be familiar with all of the [dozens] of highways we drove on, I'm going to have the route to and from the airport more or less memorized, I'm going to be able to find my way to the school without looking up directions on Mapquest.
Most of my first impressions of the new area are pretty favorable. The scenery is nice, for one thing. Everything is so green and lush. You just don't know green where I'm from, you really don't. Even the places in my home state that I consider green are nothing to people that actually grew up with woods and trees. We'd be driving on the highway and you can't even tell how densely populated the area is because you can't see anything to either side of you except trees. I already can't wait for fall, I bet it's going to be beautiful. I'm a little less excited about my first real winter, but hey, it will be interesting to have actual seasons.
Because it's such a busy area, they have pretty much all of the stores and restaurants I'd like to have (local specialties of my home state notwitstanding). They're not all necessarily near campus or the town where I'll likely be living, but within half an hour I could get to pretty much anything I'd ever need, I think.
The school itself has a really nice campus. I didn't go into any of the buildings, but Mom and I drove around and checked everything out. It looks the way I feel like a college should look, like the mental picture I would always get in my head when I would imagine university when I was growing up: dark brick buildings that all look like they've been around for at least a hundred years, lots of open spaces of green grass, white columns, etc. My undergrad campus was like that--most of the buildings matched in color and looked like they belong together, there were flowers everywhere, etc.--and I'm happy to be going back to that kind of campus as opposed to the one I've been on the past couple of years that's very urban and full of a hodgepodge of buildings that don't belong together at all. This new school will be the biggest I have ever attended, quite a bit bigger than even the large state school I just graduated from. I doubt the size will affect me that much considering I'm a Ph.D. student and will be fairly isolated, but it will still be interesting being on such a huge campus. The other nice thing about the campus is that at least in outward appearance the administration seems highly supportive of graduate students. There are several campus apartment complexes just for graduate students (I can't live there because of my hound, but still, they're there), most of the other apartment complexes in the area approve your application automatically and waive all deposits if you show proof that you're a grad student, etc. So that seems like a good sign.
I'm also just excited about my location in general. I'm in striking distance of so many cool cities. When we drove through the nearest big city south of where I'll be living on our way to the hotel from the airport, I saw all these sights I have only ever read about. I can't wait to go down and do some exploring once I move up there. And then on Tuesday Mom and I were tired of looking at apartments so we drove up to the big city to the north of where I'll be living. We had so much fun. We did one of those goofy Duck Tours that drive you around town and take you into the water as well. We were making fun of it, of course, but it was fun and interesting. The whole downtown area and historic district were great, there are a ton of bars and shops. And the shops range from things like Urban Outfitters and Filene's Basement (where I found a pair of Earnest Sewn jeans for only $60, marked down from $200 which made me really happy because there are few things that make me happier than hugely discounted designer jeans) to funky little surf shops and galleries. I have heard that the rest of the city isn't that great, but the touristy area we were in was a lot of fun and I hope I'll have chances to go back up there and hang out as well.
So all of that is great. The apartment hunting went okay. I was pleasantly surprised at how big all of the apartments were. I was under the impression that I'd only be able to afford a closet, but the smallest apartment I looked at was 560 square feet, which is still 50 more square feet than I have currently. The downside is that the area around the campus just isn't all that great in terms of safety. There's a pretty high amount of crime in the county. Most of the county's bad rep comes from the gang and drug activity in towns further south than I'd want to live anyway, but you still have to be very careful about where you end up because there are some towns that are pretty safe and some that are decidedly ghetto, and then a few that are either good or bad literally depending on what street you end up on. So I have been spending a lot of time online in forums with current students asking what areas are ghetto and what areas are okay.
The thing is, I don't always know what to think when people say an apartment complex is "ghetto." Because if we're just talking occasional roaches, mice, and maintenance people that are sometimes less than responsive, well, in my mind that is just apartment living. It sucks, but that's the stuff I have to deal with until I can afford to buy my own house and do my own repairs and not have to share a wall with messy people. I'm a very neat person with a cat, so I figure that helps on bug/mice prevention anyway. But ACTUAL ghetto is a different story. Just as I acknowledge that bugs happen everywhere (everywhere remotely within my price range, anyway) I also acknowledge that crime happens everywhere. My current apartment was broken into over Thanksgiving, and I had someone steal my car stereo when I was an undergrad. It happens. I wish it didn't happen, but it does. And I have already acknowledged the fact that since I'm moving to such an urban area it is bound to happen again and I need to be even more vigilant about security than usual. I can deal with that. I'll hate it and it will piss me off, but I can deal with it. But I don't want to wake up every morning fearing that my car is going to be missing from the parking lot, I don't want to have to carry my computer with me every time I leave the house to keep it safe, and I sure as hell don't want to be afraid to take my dog out to go to the bathroom after dark for fear that someone will be waiting out there ready to hold me up at gunpoint. To me, that is what "ghetto" really is, and I am not going to deal with that sort of living situation, obviously. Not when I can afford not to deal with it.
The thing is, I find it hard to believe that any place that actively caters to university students is really going to be that ghetto. I don't think it is naive to believe that as long as I mind my own business, I will mostly be left alone. I hope it's not naive to believe that, anyway.
I also find myself wondering if part of this county's bad rep is that it's primarily a minority area. Without giving away too much identifying info, I grew up in a city where as a white girl I was the minority. I'm glad I grew up there. I believe that anyone that claims to be color blind is lying, but I think as a result of my upbringing I'm closer to being color blind (at least in regards to this particular, uh, color) than most people. I know from talking to to others about where I grew up that people generally have this impression that it's either a scary place full of poor illegal immigrants where you have to live in fear from all the gangsters, or that it's the most boring place on the planet and people only live there because they have no other choice. I'm not going to lie, by the time I was 18 I was ready to get the hell out of there, but isn't that the case of pretty much every 18 year old who has lived in the same city her entire life, regardless of how "cool" that city may be? And now that I have been gone for so many years, I realize how many good points my hometown has. And I think that's how this new place is going to be, too. I feel like maybe it's the same sort of much maligned, misunderstood area as the place I grew up and that much of the reason it is so misunderstood is that there just aren't enough white faces there. Which isn't to say there aren't plenty of major problems and issues in this new place and in my hometown. There are. I guess I'm just saying in a very long-winded way that I'm okay with a little bit of 'hood. It's how I grew up. And one of the reasons I chose this university over the other is that I wanted that diversity I have been missing for the past six years. With that said, I'm probably going to have to spring for apartments at the high end of my price range since there's "little bit o' ghetto" and then there's "meth lab in the apartment next door and MS-13 tagging on all the cars in the parking lot."
At any rate, I definitely have one apartment that I can move into on August 9th, and I feel decent about it. I'm still looking at a few other options, too, and thinking about maybe going back up there in July to look at the actual unit I'd be getting in each complex before making a final decision. The apartments I like the best are going to be the longest commute to school, which kind of sucks, but they seem to be close to everything else and in the safest neighborhoods, so I don't know...it's all still up in the air.
Still, it was a productive trip and I'm really glad I went up and got a feel for everything. I can't wait to go back. I wish I could just fast forward a bit. I'd especially like to fast forward through all the packing I'm going to have to start doing tomorrow.
Yes, my last day here is a week from today and I haven't started packing at all yet. I just hate living amidst boxes and chaos so I'm putting it off as long as possible. I did do some productive things today, like picking up my diploma and arranging to have my final transcript sent to the new school, and getting online to change my address on all my subscriptions and accounts. I figure tomorrow I'll purge my dresser, desk, and closet, and get rid of all the crap I have that isn't moving up north with me. And then I'll start packing up my kitchen and knicknacks and stuff like that. It's going to suck, but it has to get done.