> I grew up in an exburb of what, at the time, was a 3rd rate city so I sort of understand what you went through. That said, it wasn't hard for my family to expose me to big cities via travel. I definitely missed out on college prep, but that was a failure of my family's culture and not something I would blame on my location. I was actually able to rise to the top(state electronics competition) thanks to being a big fish in a small pond. In most major cities I never would have gotten that far.
Your kids will be living a lonely lifestyle. People don't live in rural areas and still manage to do lots of travel, have a great education, and so forth. Your kids will be the exception... I grew up in smaller towns (4,000 7+ years, 5,000 6+ years, 20,000 3 years) that were 3+ hours from a major city. I had never even visited the city before I was 18 because my parents couldn't afford traveling. I don't think my experience was too uncommon.
And education? Eh - real bad. At least in a major city you have a choice between a few schools and you could theoretically find a nice private school too.
> But what I realize that I missed was the knowledge of how big the world was. I thought going to the local state college was "making it." I didn't understand how the world worked or what was possible. I missed out on opportunities because I didn't realize that I should be looking for them.
This hits it on the head. If you grow up in a region without opportunity, you just don't know that it exists elsewhere.
The biggest problem I had with living in rural areas was the lack of opportunity. I was always taking the most "advanced" classes - but at schools in cities - I found out I was barely keeping up. Even then, many classes weren't offered at my schools because there just wasn't the demand and/or sufficient funding (I went to an unusually poor school district - we only went to school 4 days a week because it was so poor). This translated to a very poor transition to entering a very competitive college and a very competitive city life. I grew up not having to work as hard to compete and then suddenly being wildly underprepared for the global market I was entering where most of the people I was working with were from wealthy families, grew up in major cities, and had a world class education at every stage of their life. It's not like all those people had horrible anxiety either... A lot of them were happy at all stages of their life. The ones with the anxiety I think were like me - ones who had never had this much competition and were feeling so far behind.
Now I'm trying to make it but without all the background built up that would help me succeed. It's a lonely path that I don't know any doing on their own. I know one person from a similar background as mine and in the bay area but if they weren't married to an incredible human being - I don't know if they'd be here. Even then, they struggle and they feel it comes back to their more rural roots.