I'm Tara, and St John's University is my heaven on Earth. I'm from a little town in the Poconos of Pennsylvania called Jim Thorpe. Most people stare blankly when I explain that, never having heard of anything like it. Truth of the matter is I am never shocked at that reaction. Nothing happens there, and no one important goes there. In such a fast-paced world, there is little relevance for it. That, however, is the exact reason I live there.
Both of my parents are retired NYPD and, to raise three girls, they wanted somewhere peaceful. That is exactly what they found in Jim Thorpe. Silence. To this day, there is little to report about the town other than the increasing influx of people fleeing the city in search of silence.
News happens everywhere. The difference is, there are things people care about, things that excite people, and things that are just practice and time fillers. Here is an ideal example: the newspaper read in Jim Thorpe is the Times News. Today's top story was about a local boy looking for donations of rubber bands so that he can assemble the world's largest rubber band ball. In New York, the Daily News' top local story was addressing the robbery of a man's snow blower that he used to help dig out New Yorkers buried under inches of snow from the recent storm. After the robbery, there is a story of a triple stabbing. In Jim Thorpe, after the story of rubber band ambitions, was a man retiring from a bank after having worked there 50 years and local students who achieved Dean's List.
It is slightly scary to me. New York is a news and media haven that is very concerned with its people and the world in which we live. Jim Thorpe. and countless other small towns around the country are so unaware of things happening in our world. On the other hand, people in big cities often are only very concerned with the big picture and forget to read the small footnotes.
That is why St. John's is such a wonderful place to be. All the news of New York City is a concern to us, but our university has concerns of its own. It's a perfect blend of big and small. There are days where there are few stories floating around campus that are really very exciting. Then there are days, especially like today, where St John's beats Duke and the whole campus is buzzing with excitement about what happened at Madison Square Garden.
I'm not yet sure if being here is transitional into something bigger, or if it is just me finding the perfect blend. The one thing I know is that when I step into the Residence Village, I am home.
