UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, March 3,1997
5A
Life associated with KU is all that some former students know. the Lure of Lawrence
Continued from Page 1A
some former students find a substitute hometown in Lawrence.
"There is going to be a comfort level of doing what they know," Wolf said. "They might feel as if they have found a home with their group of friends, and they don't want to leave that."
Tom Ruby, a Wichita psychologist, said that when students continued to live in the town where they had attended school, it was often to delay entering the post-college world.
"By staying in the cocoon of the university, this becomes the real world for those who graduate," Ruby said. "School defines the identity of the student for five or six years, and it's hard to give that up and go to a new environment with new places and people."
Ruby suspects that the former students who decide to stay here are not originally from Lawrence but from smaller towns.
"If a student went to a school like Boston College, it would be easier to leave because the school is in a big city," he said. "But it would be harder to leave a school in a smaller city because the community is smaller and warmer."
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Back at the party, Renck makes his way to the beer kee and stops to speak to friends, many of whom are still in school. Renck reminisces about professors and tests and agrees that the comfort factor has played a large part in his decision to stay in Lawrence
"I've made enough friends and associations here that it is the only place that I really know," he says. "Lawrence is much more of a home than where my parents live."
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But Lawrence can begin to feel like a trap after a while. Amy Irig, a 27-year-old 1994 KU graduate from Concordia, didn't want to leave. Her main
And she hasn't.
After spending seven years in Lawrence, Ihrig still shares a house with two roommates and works as an office assistant at Alvamar Country Club.
reason for staying in Lawrence after the pomp and circumstance was her friends. But she has begun to realize that perhaps staying wasn't the wisest decision.
"I can barely make little decisions, much less life-changing ones," she said. "And moving is a life-changing decision."
But continuing to live in Lawrence is a decision she now admits wasn't smart.
"I still wanted to hang on to the lifestyle I had in college," she said. "I'm not living like most 27-year-olds. I live like someone who is 22. I think if I had gone to K-State, I would have gotten off my ass long ago. I wouldn't want to stay in Manhattan after I graduated."
Ihrig has two degrees, one in journalism and one in psychology.
"School didn't teach me what to do after they shipped me out the door," she said, adding that her former student status was "definitely a stalling of adulthood."
Being part of a generation that has a reputation for slacking off doesn't help when it comes time to leave Lawrence.
"Society says it's OK to delay, and it's OK to postpone," Ruby said. "There are different expectations on this generation."
Wichita psychologist Tom Ruby says that students often return to a college town because they miss the familiarity.
"Staying in that lifestyle is just an extension of our childhood. It's like Peter Pan not wanting to grow up."
Ihrig admits that she wants to hang on to the lifestyle she had while attending KU. Knowing all the ins and outs of a town's night life has its advantages,
especially in a college town.
"It kept me in the college life socially by staying in Lawrence," Ihrig said. "In Kansas City, they still party, but they don't have the partyina that goes on in Lawrence."
The lack of maturity and motivation that plagues some former KU students is not unusual, Wolf said. However, she said that young people today weren't required to be as mature as past generations because they had been coddled by their parents.
"Yuppie parents are as indulgent as they can be," she said. "The family is more child-centered, where children used to be a side project."
The end of indulgence is something that Irig has had to face. As the years go by, she finds that her parents are becoming less patient with her situation.
"I don't think my parents expected me to be 27, with two degrees, making $5.50 an hour," Hrig said. "I look at a career and a job as something I'm too young to do. It wouldn't be any fun. It's real life, and I feel like I'm not ready to mature yet."
But Ihrig says that she is becoming embarrassed with her situation and thinks it might be time to move on.
"I don't want to be 30 and making $6 an hour," Irigr said, "Lawrence doesn't have what I need now. I feel really old here, and it's not fun going to bars anymore. I'd rather go somewhere I won't meet 18-year-old boys."
At the party, Renck sips his beer and talks about his misgivings with Lawrence. After watching friends graduate, leave and start families, he feels both fortunate and deprived. Married friends envy his lifestyle, and older adults disapprove of it.
"I will admit that my decision to stay here is based partly on my complete lack of motivation," Renck says. "I didn't look for a job when I left school because, honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I still don't know what I want to do. I definitely live the life of someone who is in college, probably more so than when I was in college."
But Renck, too, is starting to feel the difference between himself and other Lawrence residents. Living in a house with six other people — some students, some not — he has begun to feel pangs of responsibility.
"I think this year I realized that I accept that this would be the last year of pretending I'm a kid," Renck said. "I knew that it would be hard for me to be responsible in the environment that I am in. When you are in your early 20s and don't have a lot of responsibility, Lawrence is fun. I've always known people who have had this kind of lifestyle. I'm not that different from other people."
In June, he and a friend will go to Europe, a trip he has long prepared for. He said that he may not come back, but if he does, he will definitely find a real job.
Renck has begun to look forward to the time when, financially, he can make his final exit from Lawrence.
"Somehow I'm going to figure out what I want to do." he said.
Irig, on the other hand, doesn't know what the future has in store for her, and that doesn't seem to bother her.
"My job is going nowhere, and I work with college kids," she said. "And I finally myself as too old to be hanging out in bars with kids."
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But for every Irrig or Renck who finally leaves Lawrence, there is another former student who is drawn back.
Eric Mater, who graduated in 1994 with a degree in journalism, left Lawrence to accept a teaching job in his hometown of Great Bend, Ind. After teaching at the community college there for three and a half semesters, he returned to Lawrence in August and has been a salesman on Massachusetts Street ever since.
"It's hard when you graduate, and you don't have a super, fantastic job like the TV promises. I just kind of freaked out," Mater said. "If I could make money writing things, I would. But I don't want to make $4.25 an hour writing obits for a paper. Besides, I like the night life."
Mater has decided to try his hand at graduate school.
"I don't want the Mom-and-Dad regular job and routine. I not ready," Mater said. "I'm avoiding growing up. I'm not interested in corporate America."
Neither are a lot of the young people in this town.
Ruby said that those students who leave a college town, only to return later, often lack the social networking and miss the traditions and the familiarity.
"The college town is the place where they've achieved notoriety and academic or social competence," Ruby said. "It's the place that's provided the most meaningfulness and purpose for a young adult."
What will be the future of a generation that prolongs childhood? If people take longer to finish school, don't leave the college culture once they have finished, take dead-end jobs, don't get married and don't have kids — how will that affect our collective future?
"It is rare to find a person who goes to college in four years, gets married six months after, and then has a kid 18 months after that," Ruby said. "We will just have to wait" and see how it comes out."
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The Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center & Commission on the Status of Women
Celebrate Women's History Month Public Law 101-6 Designating the Month of March as "Women's History Month"
This year's theme, "A Fine and Long Tradition of Community Leadership" gives us the opportunity to celebrate continued community leadership that has been articulated and actualized by women throughout time. These contributions are numerous and brilliant. The quality of women's activism has afforded new and exciting changes in local, state and federal government. Therefore, this celebration commemorates the long standing commitment that women hold to furthering of their personal goals, the goals of the community, and the goals of humanity.
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