The alarm on your iPhone begins to go off. Charged with alertness, as if your mind missed a step on the staircase, you hastily swipe your phone. The screen tells you it’s 8:39 a.m., meaning you must have slept through the first three rounds of Marimba. Who knew such a delicate instrument could aid in a task as sinister as waking a college student from a power sleep? Class is at 9:10 a.m. You roll out of bed, roll into the same outfit as yesterday (your classmates for today haven’t seen you in it, and your roommate can’t judge; she wears sandals with socks), and you wipe the sleep off your face and apply a couple pats of concealer. Grabbing your textbook and a spiral, you bolt out the door, down the hall and barrel down a couple flights of stairs.
At this point, you’re barely going to make it. Your lecture hall is only a couple blocks down, but it takes longer than it should to get there when you take into account the dodging of street vendors, the cabs that dart in front of pedestrians even when there’s a walk signal, and the stream of apologies you dole out to slow walkers as you weave through them. Slow walkers can eat your dust, among other things.
You emerge from your dorm building onto Fifth Avenue with a trickle of sweat teasing your spine. A gentle breeze winds itself around you. You stop in your tracks, and your head falls back. The sounds of the city envelop you in hypnosis: the vrooms and honks, the whistles and shouts, the marching of millions of pairs of shoes, the rattle of the subway grate under your feet.
The impossibly tall buildings that make up your urban campus seem to coddle you. This is your part of town. While the whole of New York is vast and faceted, intimidatingly so, it’s a comfort to know that you at least know this area. Your area.
You walk to class with pride bouncing in your heels. Who of your friends from high school can say they live in such a vibrant city? As you head towards 11th, your ears perk up at three different languages being spoken around you--none of which are English. A man plays a saxophone on the sidewalk, without a hat placed before him, not asking for anything, just tooling around. Who needs to plug in headphones when there are so many sounds to meditate on?
A moment ago, the stress knotted in your throat like a piece of food down the wrong pipe. But the second you stepped out onto the sidewalk, the hum of chaos relaxed you. You make it to class on time and take a seat next to a classmate from Germany who speaks five languages and wants to change the world through documentary film-making.
That’s why going to college in New York City is different from going to a small college town. Sure, you might miss out on frat house parties. You might feel safer having your hand held. But you receive your independence from an urban campus. Going to college in the city makes me feel more like an adult than my previous year at a small college town ever did. Kids on an urban campus are brave. We’re thrown into a massive city; some of us need to find off-campus housing, we need to find jobs and figure out the subway. No one is holding our hands, but we don’t need them to.
If I was late for a class last year, in the small college town where I lived, I didn't have anything to distract me from the stress. I usually developed a sour disposition, grimacing at the identical buildings that I bustled past. I didn't have the street vendors to nod to, the businessmen in suits to wonder about, the combination of modern and old architecture to marvel at. Whenever I've been in a bad mood in New York, I've taken a step back, put my brain on autopilot, and watched everything around me as it unfolds. There are so many stories on the street to distract me from a petty bad mood.
Before I moved here, I heard a lot of talk about the energy of New York City. People had awe for this place. My friends would remark how you felt like you could accomplish anything here. I was a bit skeptical, but now I feel the same way. Lots of students at my previous college would say, “New York? That’s so far away!” or “I could never do that,” and some of them didn’t understand why I’d want to uproot my normalcy. Some people are content with staying in the same town their entire lives, and that is certainly a valid way to live. It makes sense, and if it makes people happy then they should never move. But for me, I finally feel like my adult life has begun. It’s all to do with being thrown into this city for big kids.
At first, I felt so small and young compared to the crowds of New York. It’s easy to feel inexperienced and naive here. I particularly felt lacking in culture and awareness of other cultures. At my previous college, most everyone was from my home state or from my high school. It was familiar and monotonous. There weren't many events to go to or excitements to seek out. But there is so much to see and do in New York. There are always concerts going on, festivals, street fairs, museums, walks to take, people to talk to, art to make, games to play, work to do, and so on. This city has a wealth of culture and experiences to take advantage of. I don’t feel so little anymore. I feel like I’m in the right place.
