Good and Bad
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12/31/2012
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Columbia, MD but have now moved away. Columbia is a very metropolitan suburb 10 minutes outside of Baltimore. As far as suburbs go it is pretty big and not a far drive from surrounding cities. You can probably find almost everything you need inside of Columbia. There are also many public pools, movie theaters, a fantastic mall, and public transportation. However, crime is bad and the way the city is built you cannot really get away from it. The good neighborhoods are placed right next to the bad ones in an effort to keep the bad neighbohoods from not being too bad and to keep from having one very bad area of Columbia. This was a good way for me growing up to know/make friends with people from all walks of life as the schools are mixed with both rich and poor. Again however, as a teenager growing up there I would not raise a teenager there. All I did (and most of the kids I knew) was do drugs, drink til I could have developed a drinking problem, and engage in other things you wouldn't want your children doing. The majority of teenagers I knew were doing the same thing. People who moved there from other places that had never been bad kids quickly became bad kids like everyone else. Many of my peers dropped out of high school and many of those peers are now still there on welfare. Now that I have moved away I realize that people don't have that high school experience everywhere. That is not to say that nobody succeeds there because many people I know did but a sizeable amount did not is all. Or at least not to the standards that most people have for their children. The cost of living is also extremely high. Getting a one bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood (not the ghetto) anywhere around Columbia will cost you at least $900+/month. I would never move back.
Beverly | Aiken, SC