7:30 AM

You start your morning with a cup of tea at Selah Tea Café on Main Street. This cozy tea house offers dozens of loose-leaf varieties alongside pastries and light breakfast items. It’s a calm, welcoming way to start the day.

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8:30 AM

You head to campus at Colby College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country and the anchor of Waterville’s identity. As a professor of environmental science, your morning starts with a lecture on watershed ecology, using the Kennebec River — right outside the classroom window — as a living case study. The students are sharp, engaged, and many of them will stay in Maine after graduation.

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12:00 PM

For lunch, you take a walk along the Kennebec River through the Riverwalk area. Waterville’s downtown has been revitalizing in recent years, with new restaurants, businesses, and public spaces. You eat your packed lunch on a bench by the water.

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1:00 PM

After lunch, you hold office hours and meet with a senior working on a thesis about microplastics in Maine’s rivers. Then you prep for tomorrow’s field lab at the Colby–Hume Center, where students collect water samples from local streams. The integration of classroom and fieldwork is one of the reasons you took this job.

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5:00 PM

After work, you drive to Quarry Road Recreation Area for a walk or run. The area has over 6 miles of trails used for walking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing. In winter, the groomed Nordic trails are some of the best in central Maine.

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7:00 PM

For dinner, you meet friends at Silver Street Tavern, a lively downtown restaurant and bar at 2 Silver Street. The menu has burgers, seafood, and pub favorites, and they host live music on weekends. You grab a table and settle in.

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8:30 PM

After dinner, you walk to Railroad Square Cinema, an independent art-house theater that’s been a Waterville institution for decades. Tonight it’s showing a documentary about Maine’s lobster industry, and the small theater is nearly full.

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10:00 PM

Back at home, you appreciate the balance Waterville offers — a meaningful academic career, a revitalizing downtown, college-town energy from Colby, and trails right outside the city. The cost of living is low and the intellectual community is rich.