When the small-town college I worked at shut down, logic suggested I should set off for the big city. But what if you can’t? And what if you just don’t want to?

“It is an unfortunate event to lose your place.”

That saying was posted on a fellow professor’s office door. We ought to know.

Our college, our employer, our home, is gone. Saint Joseph’s College, a small Catholic college founded in 1889 in Rensselaer, Indiana, is no more.

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You might not expect an institution of higher learning in such a rural area, but there it grew. The red-brick buildings rise out of farmers’ fields of corn and beans, and, depending on wind direction and season, the smell of manure or rotting cornstalks floats across campus. The land is flat, so the iconic twin towers of the college chapel are visible from several miles away.

Saint Joseph’s is located on the far south side of town on Route 231 along with the McDonald’s, Walmart, a grocery store, and the string of other businesses that popped up adjacent to campus in recent years. About 6,000 people live here, many engaged in the difficult business of farming. They believe in hard work, Christian values, and, if yard signs are any indication, Donald Trump.

I know the place like the back of my hand, because I grew up there – and that wasn’t always easy.

My father came here in 1968 to teach philosophy at Saint Joseph’s College, and eventually became a vice-president. As a professor’s son, I turned out to be a skinny kid who liked books and computers. Rensselaer is a football and basketball town. I’m sure you can see where this is going. Then again, I also dressed to emulate the members of Duran Duran, so for any bullying that went on I’d probably have to put the blame at 50-50.

Regardless, I swore I would leave Rensselaer after high school and never come back.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I confounded everyone by choosing Saint Joseph’s College for my undergraduate degree. I have no regrets: I had many of my best years during which I met life-long friends. Not long after I graduated, my brother Michael followed the family path and attended Saint Joseph’s. We both eventually returned to our beloved college to teach.

Older and possibly wiser, we considered our positions at Saint Joseph’s to be dream jobs, and saw the appeal of Rensselaer through adult eyes. The town is clean, quiet, and safe – no small consideration for Michael, a father of two boys. We would grow our careers at the college, and never leave.

Our futures changed on bitterly cold afternoon this February. The college board of trustees announced that due to financial exigency, Saint Joseph’s was “temporarily suspending” academic operations in May. That’s corporate-speak for “every student must transfer and every employee will soon need a new job.”

My life disintegrated before my eyes. I started out stunned and stumbling. Then I found myself like Ishmael, clinging to Queequeg’s coffin amid a black and swirling sea. Cold and scared, I was – and still am – searching for land somewhere on the dark horizon.

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The “land” in this case is employment. Many outside voices are quick to suggest faculty move to cities. After all, with the college gone, Rensselaer holds no market for professors. Logic dictates moving to an urban area or at least a larger university with more openings.

Cities and traditional college towns, they say, are more fitting milieus for professors – they have bookshops, cafes, art galleries, and pretentious noodle bars with gourmet mac and cheese and overpriced cocktails. Undoubtedly, university utopias with arugula and fancy coffee are more politically aligned with the liberal egghead stereotype, as opposed to deep-red Rensselaer. Why wouldn’t I reject the quaint, storybook qualities of rural life and set off for a big city?

But what if you can’t? Or what if you just don’t want to?

Take Anne Gull. She was a chemistry professor at Saint Joseph’s for 17 years. Her husband teaches business at the local high school where their son, Alex, is heading into his sophomore year. Their son Chandler is already off at college in another town. In 2003, Anne’s parents moved to Rensselaer to help with the kids and be a part of their young lives. “They won’t stay if we leave,” Anne says of her parents. “Then we’d have two houses to sell.”

Besides that housing market challenge, her husband’s job in town, and her intense reluctance to pluck Alex out of his high school, Anne feels anchored to Rensselaer by its intangibles. “I like knowing people,” she says. “This really is a community and I loved being involved. I was so active with my sons’ school and sports activities that other people thought I was a stay-at-home mom.”

Since the college’s closing, however, the future of these social bonds is tenuous at best. “I reflect on it all at church or at my son’s sports events,” Anne says. “When I’m there, I see other people who used to work at the college and think ‘they might be gone soon.’”

She plans to apply to other universities in Indiana, knowing full well that may mean a commute of an hour or more. “I’ll need a new car,” Anne says, with a rueful laugh. “But it’s what’s best for my family.”

For Natalie (not her real name), a fellow colleague in the English department, Rensselaer was also about family. Her three year-old house sits nestled among oak trees far from neighbors on land that has been in her family for generations. She’s tied to the ground that her parents gave her, and it’s where she wants to raise her family. Her husband teaches at the local high school, so a move would not only uproot her kids, but cost him his job. For a household on a dual income business model, any relocation would have to be a package deal.

She waves around at her place in the trees. An owl hoots from somewhere in the distance. “It means something to my parents and me. Our connection to this gentle, peaceful piece of land is profound,” Natalie says. “I’m geographically bound.” To hold things together, she has accepted a position as an English teacher at an area high school.

“Whenever I’ve jumped (or been thrown) in life, this place has offered a net. What do I lose? The prestige that comes with being a college professor. What do I gain? Myself.”

That is it. Rensselaer made us who we are. Do my politics and thinking put me at odds at times with those who live here? Sure. Do I feel a part of the place anyway? Absolutely.

Regardless of the books we read (or don’t), more than the buttons we push in voting booths, and even more than the ideas we hold, we are Rensselaer and Rensselaer is us.

I won’t lie – I want to stay, but that all depends upon employment. I am now an English professor in my own version of Waiting for Godot, an absurd limbo of applications, interviews, and silence. Just like the sign said, I am a man who has lost his place.