Around seven years ago at this time of year, I would often leave my fifth-grade classroom 30 minutes early to head to a stuffy portable that would feed the ego of the around 20 kids in that room. Gifted And Talented Education (or GATE) was a program meant to feed the intellectual curiosity that select students couldn’t receive in the classroom, and when college application season finally came around, I remember a certain assignment we had to do for that class. Despite our limited understanding of the world, we were tasked with choosing our “dream college.” When it came around to present the universities of our choice, the young dreamers in that class rattled on about schools like MIT, Yale, and Princeton. As I came up to present, the only school I had in mind was Stanford University. It was an amazing school for engineering, it’s only a state away, and I liked the logo.
As the years went on, that kind of ambition felt like it started to fade in the people around me. Some people became okay with settling for UNLV or UNR, which are still solid options. But that urge to leave, to see what was beyond our skyline of casinos and suburban sprawl, never went away for me. I still had it when I was mass applying to universities in November and December last year, when every essay felt like a new chance to prove that I could go somewhere, anywhere, beyond the desert that raised me.
It’s not that I hate Las Vegas either. I don’t. I love this city. I’ll never forget the late-night food spots, the Windmill Library next to my school where I crammed for exams and volunteered, the endless fun that I had at the Arts District, or even The Strip despite how touristy and congested it had become.
And it’s not about needing to escape my family or proving that Nevada schools aren’t good enough. It’s about the fact that I’ve spent 18 years in one place. If college is supposed to expand your mind, how can I justify shrinking my world? I would be doing myself a disservice not to use this moment—this huge, terrifying, exhilarating step into higher education—to live somewhere different. To learn alongside people from every part of the country. To walk unfamiliar streets and build new traditions in a place where nobody knows who I was in high school.
I know not everyone has the means or desire to leave, and that’s okay. Some people thrive by staying close to home, grounded by familiarity and the community that built them. But for me, going out of state is about taking everything this city gave me and testing it in a new environment. It’s about putting myself in situations where I’m challenged, not just academically, but socially and culturally. I want to have conversations with people who’ve never seen the Las Vegas Strip in person, who grew up in towns I’ve never heard of, who see the world differently than I do. I want to grow in ways that a comfort zone doesn’t allow.
I never ended up applying to Stanford, I missed the deadline. But maybe that was for the best as this Fall, I’ll be heading to Cambridge to study computer science at Harvard. I’m nervous, excited, and definitely aware of how surreal it feels to put it into words. I’ll be thousands of miles away from everything I’ve ever known, surrounded by strangers, historic buildings, and more snow than I’ve probably seen in my life. But that’s the point. I’m ready to take what Vegas taught me and see how far it can carry me. I’m leaving Las Vegas, but I’m not running from it. I’m building on it. And no matter where I end up, it’ll always be part of my story.
