If you pay less than $8,000 a semester to attend school here, this column is not for you. If you did not come to Penn State with half of your high school, this column is not for you.
If you were not destined from birth to be a Nittany Lion, this column is not for you.
This is for the people who came here on a whim, who flipped a coin, who just said "Mom, Dad, write me a check, I'm going to Penn State."
This is for the out-of-state students, those of us from New York, New Jersey, Ohio and any other place that's not a commonwealth. When I came to Penn State three years ago, I knew two people. We were the first group in years from our suburban New York high school to apply to this university. Most of my friends went to Cornell, Albany and Binghamton, but I was always one to be different.
I wanted to get out of New York, where I lived in the same house for the first 18 years of my life, and be in a different environment.
And did I ever get that when I arrived here in August, 1999.
But before I even arrived, I had to make the choice. I always hated making decisions, especially one like this, the biggest one I had ever made. It came down to Syracuse and Penn State. My dad put absolutely no pressure on me to decide, which I appreciated, but I also wished he had tried to sway me one way or the other; because if I made the wrong choice, I could blame him. But this was all on me.
When Syracuse gave me a scholarship, making tuition there nearly equal to Penn State's, it evened things up. They were both four hours from home, both sports schools, both fairly large, impersonal places.
But Penn State accepted me in November of my senior year, so I was leaning toward coming here for several months, and finally one day in April I just told my dad to give me a check made out to Penn State.
So August rolled around, and I was here.
According to Penn State's Web site, 87 percent of undergraduates are in-state students. So I find myself in the minority when I explain that "the city" refers to New York City, or that Rockland County, where I am from, is not on Long Island, or that I don't go home every weekend because the four-hour trip on Interstate 80 is mind-numbingly boring.
During my three years here, I've experienced countless debates about the relative merits of Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh.
I've suffered the annoyance of nobody caring about the Subway Series in 2000, but listening to people scream out their dorm windows during the Flyers-Penguins series earlier that year.
I've found myself in groups where everyone else knew either each other, or a friend of a friend from high school.
But it hasn't been all bad.
I got a notice in the mail that I had an unpaid parking ticket. However, I didn't get a parking ticket in the first place. Because the license plate on the notice was a Pennsylvania plate, I had obvious proof it wasn't my car.
I've been able to meet hundreds of new people, some of whom I've become friends with, others I've just known for a short while. Because I didn't come here with a circle of friends, I had to go out and find friends here.
In fact, I haven't seen the two people I came with from my high school in two years. And best of all, I experienced the culinary joy that is pierogies.
I felt like an outcast at the start, when everyone knew each other and had a lot more in common with each other than with me. But as I've met more people, that feeling has gone away. I'm a senior now, and even though my parents are moving to Florida today and my license plate still says New York, I feel like I belong here just as much as anyone born in this state.
This place grows on you.
