A Mature Moment

I was planning my half term break today in a Starbucks (internet was down at school!  the horror!) and I had to look up where my friend's school is so I could figure out how to get there to pick her up.  Basically, her school is thousands of years old.  Mine isn't.
When we wrote essays describing our ideal school, I said that I wanted some place that would be easy to travel from.  I got a school that has a rail station a five minute's walk away, so they did satisfy my requests.  Partway through the summer, I panicked.  My school is in a lively town (it's small, but there's plenty of shops on the high street, a cinema, etc.)  What I really wanted was a school with a history, with traditions and prestige.  My school totally doesn't have that.  It makes me really sad to think about because part of the reason I loved my old school was that it made my proud to look at it and realise that I went there, that it was part of me.  My school wasn't ancient (hey, we just don't have those in America) but it was relatively old (before the turn of the century) and was very prestigious as far as schools go.  So my friend gets to walk out in the countryside every morning and go to school at a place that has a history and a story.  I see a strip club outside my boarding house window.
Honestly, I could keep drawing comparisons and getting more depressed about the differences.  If I don't think about it, it's fine.  But then I remember it and I get really pissed.  I don't want to sit here for nine more months.  It's really not that nice.  I'd rather be in the countryside, seeing an amazing sight every morning as I trudge along to class.
Then I decide to be mature.  I can't change the past - what I asked for as I sat around a table with six other applicants, writing my essay on that January morning - but I can relish in what I have.  I can get to London in 40 minutes!  That's pretty amazing!  I have Starbucks right here, I have H&M and Boots and WH Smith.  I'm going to be spending the four years after this in the rural Northeast of America.  I get this year to be 'urban.'
I become even more mature when I make the decision that I want to be proud of where I am for the rest of my life.  I felt pride when I walked past the beautiful vista of the lake at school with the rolling hills behind it, and a beautiful sunset falling on a warm spring night.  I was so happy seeing that.  I want to be sure that when I'm older, I can be happy with where I am.  Whether that be in London, New York, the middle of nowhere in France, Spain, or America, I want to be proud to look at it.
It's still really tough to think that I'm already really bored of this town and it's only been four weeks.  But it also prompts me to take initiative - to travel around where I am and to get into the English countryside that everyone raves about.  I just have to be mature enough to do that.