Grand Junction isn’t just where you go to school.

CMU has lots of students from the Grand Valley. Locals and the non-trads, this is not directed at you. Students who came from all over to attend our school, don’t just leave once the semester is over.

Far too often, I meet students that have little knowledge of the wondrous place our school is located. One in particular did not know where Palisade was. Palisade is the town in the Grand Valley closest to the Grand Mesa, which our school is partially named after.

I can understand this detachment. Students are busy adjusting to college life, making new friends, studying and trying not to get caught drinking. However, I have witnessed a separation between campus life and Valley life. I was a victim of this. Until I started writing for this publication I had little involvement in school activities outside of class, nor did I make any friends that I didn’t already know before college.

It is a goal of mine to blur the line drawn between our school and the city it resides in. I long for the day when students drive out to Palisade for the afternoon, and when citizens of Grand Junction with no personal connection to our school pick up The Criterion to see what the school is up to.

I have a simple proposition for students planning on leaving the Grand Valley as soon as they walk out of their last final: don’t. Take a few days and explore the place that you have lived for the past nine months. Take advantage of school being over, the lack of schoolwork and the sleep surplus.

It should be warm, so try floating the river. The Grand Mesa turns into a humid, forest wonderland in the summer, abundant with flowers and wild mushrooms. Spend a day up there. Downtown Grand Junction, Fruita and Palisade have a plethora of festivals, farmer’s markets, concerts and other events.

This community is dependent on this university from the money it brings to local businesses to the construction jobs its growth gives local workers. It is the obligation of students to venture and to discover, as you are in your field of study, in the parts of the Grand Valley and western Colorado they have left unexplored.

What better time than summer? Try coming back a few weeks early, check out the Palisade Peach festival, just one of the many reasons the place you go to school is one of a kind.