The column I intend to present here is one that is observationally critical and one that displays an opinion about the community that is Wausau, Wisconsin, but to do both in a way that is not overly pessimistic toward what I feel can be a great city. As a 19-year-old headed into my second year of college, whose interests include film, live music, broadcast journalism and an engaging nightlife, Wausau doesn’t necessarily lend too readily to that sort of lifestyle. Does it bug me? Very much so. But while I struggle to fill my summer schedule with a plentiful palette of entertainment, and feel the angst that so easily comes with being young and living in a city that shuts itself down at 10pm, what also becomes very apparent is what Wausau citizens often take for granted. The school system that unfailingly finds itself among the nation’s best year after year, and a junior college that is a stepping stone to the well-respected universities around Wisconsin. A downtown area, which at times may wrestle with financial hardship, that still has a nostalgic facade of decades past, and holds within it the beautiful 400 Block and Grand Theatre. And face it, when the snow falls, there aren’t too many superior places to be.
What I can bring to a column is a scatterbrained, mishmash of feelings—ones that are almost bittersweet. While I sometimes look at the comforts and opportunities being a citizen of the Wausau area has provided me with over the course of growing up, I many times feel as if I’m trapped within this isolated bubble, surrounded by farm fields and geographically dropped in the middle of a state whose only roads leading out into the real world are all dead ends.
