The date at the end of summer — July 22, to be exact — still doesn’t feel real to Shelby Susnick. It’s still months away, preceded by graduation from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU, a summer job at the Chocolate Moose and endless goodbyes. But the days are flying by, and Susnick can’t avoid reality: she’s leaving Bloomington after 22 years.
Susnick, an IU senior and “townie” since she was two months old, grew up with her mom and sister in Bloomington, a town overrun with 18-22 year-old college students.
Her upbringing was somewhat untraditional because of it, between the opportunities she was afforded living next to a university rife with art and sports programs, and the ability to drop by college house parties when she was a senior in high school.
Her classmates at Bloomington High School South didn’t often seem to feel the weight of their favorable circumstances. Susnick noted the opportunities to go see professionally produced operas and cheer on college sports teams often went overlooked.
In fact, other than those events, she remained mostly removed from the IU campus, Susnick said.
As for the stereotyped assumption Bloomington locals despise the student population?
“Oh, yeah,” Susnick said, laughing. “There are weekends that townies know not to go downtown at all, because it will be crowded with students.” She lists Welcome Week, Little 500 and graduation weekend, but the list continues.
Still, there was no other place Susnick wanted to be after high school.
Her dad who lives in Kentucky encouraged her to apply to colleges there, but admits she never even looked into it. She’d never dreamed of any place but IU.
She and her mom are close, she said, so living near her wasn’t intrusive. The worst it got was introducing someone she was dating to her family after maybe three weeks of talking to them.
“It’s normal for me, but it can freak people out,” she said.
Certain things came easily to Susnick in her college transition.
When she moved into Foster Quad her freshman year, she was able to drive to campus right when the building opened for move-in, avoiding the stress of busy breezeways and cramped elevators. Her family was always close by if she was having a hard time. Her mom did her laundry for her entire freshman year. There was always someone on campus that she knew.
“Perks of being a townie,” she said. “There will probably be someone you know on your (dorm’s) floor.”
Susnick’s mom’s house was always free to store her furniture between moves, and moving itself was a cinch because she could do it fraction by fraction, unlike the average freshman, who has to haul everything in and then out in the span of a day.
It wasn’t all perfect. Knowing so many people, it took work for Susnick to branch out of her high school friend groups, and it took a lot of convincing her mom to let her live on-campus her freshman year and not at home.
And she’s firm about one thing in particular: she was as clueless as any other freshman four years ago.
“A common misconception of townies is that they know all of the buildings on campus,” she said. “But I didn’t know where Ballantine was just like everyone else.” She said she didn’t even know where to find Swain Hall West her junior year of college.
Now getting ready to flip her blue SPEA tassel from right to left at her undergraduate graduation Saturday, Susnick is taking her nonprofit management major to Miami, Florida. She has committed to a year of teaching inner city children through the organization City Year.
She looked for jobs closer to home but realized she’d been applying for corporate positions she wasn’t passionate about. That was when it hit her: it was time to leave Bloomington.
She’d never been outside of Indiana for more than a month and prepped her mom early for the move.
“I’m basically going with two suitcases and trying to figure it all out when I get there,” Susnick said with a shrug.
She’s traveled outside of the United States to Poland and Germany, but has never had to deal with such a permanent transition before.
“I just put off what everyone else was feeling four years ago,” she said, referring to the homesickness she said she’s sure she’ll feel.
Susnick’s mom didn’t seem too uncomfortable when she found out Susnick was packing up and moving to Miami, more than 1,000 miles away — “She just figures she’ll vacation there,” Susnick said.
Susnick actually worries she won’t be able to get back home often because she’ll have so many visitors knocking on her door. Her goal is to be back for Thanksgiving and she said she knows she’ll never be leaving Bloomington for good.
She said she’s thankful for the culturally diverse town she grew up in and how it’s opened her eyes to a better understanding of the global community.
She said she knows how hard leaving will be, but that it’s got to happen.
And, anyways, she has a whole summer between now and the move.
She’s planning to spend time with her best friend from high school doing all of the things everyone assumes a townie has done but they actually haven’t, including watching “Breaking Away” and cliff jumping at Rooftop Quarry.
“To find another town like Bloomington is going to be really difficult for me,” she said. “But I feel like I just need to know what it’s like to leave.”
