Why, Pomona?

Sorry, the title was supposed to be a two-part pun on "My Sharona," but I guess it didn't really pan out.
Yeah, I'm back. And yeah, it's weird, and not in a good way. I'm feeling everything I predicted I'd be feeling before I came here, but the fact that I knew I'd be feeling this way doesn't make things any better.
Here's the deal: I like cities. I like it when there are a million things to do at any given moment, when the nightlife involves shows and clubs and the theatre and not the same old groups of people wandering around in search of a server of beer who will demand to see your (obviously underaged) ID but then serve you anyway. I like not having to rely on cars (or friends with cars) to get places. And I love feeling anonymous. In Petersburg I could, and regularly did, walk down Nevsky and just disappear into the crowd. Here in Claremont I'm lucky if I can walk from my dorm to the dining hall without seeing ten people I know.
It's not even just that everyone here knows everyone else. It's the knowledge that I'm spending--that I already have spent--a significant portion of my life surrounded only by a couple of thousand people who are almost exactly like me. I guess that's a draw for some people who apply to liberal arts colleges--"you'll have a chance to be surrounded by the best and brightest people in the country" and blah blah blah. I fell for that when I applied here, but honestly, there's something wrong with the assumption that you can learn more from talking to someone who got upwards of 1500 on their SATs than you can from someone who didn't. And while it's nice to have lots of people my age around, I miss the feeling I had when I lived in Petersburg: that I was, finally, interacting with the Real World, that my knowledge of big words and important concepts didn't mean I didn't have to deal with the same torturous commute and lousy food service that every other city inhabitant did.
Pomona College, man. It's not just a bubble: it's a cage.