She has a beanie; I have a sunhat. She has a five-floor walk up within walking distance from the Brooklyn Bridge; I have a dorm in sorority quad. She has a passion for art and food, and I just eat what she’s taking a picture of. Last, but absolutely not least, she is a New York Hipster, and I am her “preppy, sorority girl” sister. If you have a sister, you know that your entire life, whether you like it or not, the two of you (or however many you may have) have been compared. It hasn't always been easy. Considering we look similar and share a last name, I was always the "little sister" to teachers or really to anyone from our town. However, I was lucky enough to be blessed with a 5-year difference between my sister and me, and I think that is partially why we are so different. I say lucky for a couple of reasons. When we were younger, she paved the path of individuality for me with her knack for art and the city life in a suburban family of business owners. She was the trial child, as most of the oldest children are. This allowed for me to be who I wanted to be, and not feel pressured to follow the suit of my parents.

Fast forward to a snapshot of today, my sister is 24 and I am freshly 19. I just recently went to New York over my winter break to visit my sister. It’s hard to fly out to LGA on a college budget, so this was my second time in 3 years visiting her. By this time, she has a job, a cool group of hipster friends, and a life of her own in a little Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Our trip was filled with adventures to all of the bakeries in her neighborhood, The Freedom Towers, and an Indian restaurant that had the best garlic naan and chicken tikka a girl could find in the city. It also included meeting her friends.

Going out to dinner was comical. Honestly, the whole getting ready process in general was. I peeked my head out of her room, “Do you have a curling iron, perhaps?” The answer was a hard "no." She preferred the natural look. Off to a great start for the night. If there is anything a sorority girl knows how to do, it is curl her hair in 5 minutes and make it look like it took 30 (thanks to pref round of recruitment). When it was all said and done, I walked out wearing my leggings, Burberry rain boots, and a gray J. Crew sweater to go underneath my trench coat. Her black silk jogger-ed self laughed in my face. I mean, how offensive! I was going to meet her friends for the first time and here she was making fun of the fact that I tried to look nice for them on a 40- degree, misty night in New York City. By the time I left, she had me wearing a massive, knitted burgundy circle scarf (which I actually really wanted to take home with me), and attempted to place a beanie on my head. While I wanted to humor her, hats are only my thing in two situations: The Kentucky Derby, or after a long night where the morning needs to be shielded by my Detroit Tigers baseball hat- neither category of which this situation fell under.

So we went out to dinner, and I actually loved her friends. One of them was even once in a sorority, only she got kicked out halfway through--shoutout to my girl, Shelbs. They laughed and told my sister and me how similar we are, and we denied and laughed back. I guess roots don’t discriminate against prepsters and hipsters. I forget sometimes how lucky I am to have grown up with someone that is so different than I am. I think it was for the best that we are on such different paths because it has taught us to respect each other's quirks, and grow into ourselves without expectations for the other. Most people say opposites attract and I believe that in this case; it is 100 percent true. Appreciating and embracing the things that make people different is so much easier than judging and refusing to accept things as they are. Next time I go to New York, I’ll make an effort to trade in my rain boots for Doc Martens and maybe nix the curling iron for the two or three days that I'm there. Who knows, maybe I can convince her into taking me to Henri Bendel! Probably not, but a girl can dream.