There comes a point in a college student’s life when they must begin the grueling transition from childhood into adulthood, bringing with it the need to begin asking and addressing the real questions in this world. These are the questions that the world has to ask.
Question #1: Does Nebraska Really Exist?
Geographical knowledge, a relatively simple field of expertise that can be adequately comprehended almost entirely through memorization, is a key component of the proper development of an intellectually competent young gentleman or lady who is prepared for the world around them. However, despite the concept being easily understandable, at times, this world deems it necessary to throw a curveball in our direction during our journey to the top; one of these curveballs is the great state of Nebraska.
Nebraska, proudly claiming its spot as one of the 50 states in the United States of America is a butcher’s-knife-shaped (No, not that one. You’re thinking of Oklahoma. The other, less impressive one.) chunk of corn and nothingness in the heart of North America, taking its place between its five land-locking neighbors, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and South Dakota.
All five of these neighboring states have been confirmed as existent entities within the United States of America. Colorado is good for skiing and I have been there myself. Cheyenne, Wyoming appears every once in a while in mopey Country song lyrics, and since Country Music is divinely inspired, we can assume that it is a real place.
Kansas is where Dorothy realized she no longer was while speaking to her dog during a manic episode that became a major motion picture. Finally, Iowa and Missouri are both parts of the little chef that cooks all the chicken for the Midwest and helps children across the country vaguely memorize the shapes of those middle states that they will never have to see unless they develop an appetite for endless fields of grain, cities with strikingly high crime rates, or understandably low housing prices.
Like I said, the existence of these fine chunks of land are not in question, but the same confidence cannot be placed in the whereabouts of the central void, Nebraska.
According to the internet (ah yes, we love the internet), the size of Nebraska is approximately 77,220 square miles and the population was at a whopping 1.9 million in 2016. That puts the state at approximately 24 people per square mile. Technically it is 24.605, but we like to think that everyone is a whole person here in New York.
Maybe things are different over there? Who knows? No matter how one looks at it, that is not a whole lot of people. You can probably find more people in a movie theater featuring Seth Rogan’s Sausage Party on repeat than you can find in an entire square mile of Nebraska. The population size alone is something to consider when attempting to determine whether or not Nebraska actually exists. The numbers seem almost unreal.
Now, before you run off to your Twitters to tweet off some poorly structured message complaining about how oppressive and insulting it is for me to assume the existential state of being of a US state, take a minute to really ask yourself.
Does Nebraska really exist? Have you ever met anyone from Nebraska? Have you ever been there yourself? Could you even draw the shape of the state right now if you were asked to? (No, that’s Oklahoma again but I like the effort.)
Chances are that the answer to all of these questions are “no”. If one of them happens to be “yes,” then either you’re a fake or your friends don’t exist. Either way, don’t move. The FBI is on its way.
One of Fordham University’s most impressive points of pride is their claim to have admitted students from 73 countries and 45 US states. My not-necessarily-educated but inexplicably valid and most likely correct guess is that Nebraska exists somewhere in the 5 outlying US states.
Hell, in one semester I’ve met several people at Fordham from California, my own home state, which lies on an entirely opposite side of the continent, and from Puerto Rico which isn’t even a real state! This is probably due to the fact that Nebraska’s limited resources are clearly invested in bringing people in and not exporting them.
The only local export of the state is corn and there just aren’t enough darn people around to eat it all, so it isn’t unreasonable that they want to keep as many of the void babies as they can. The reason I know that this is where they place their interest is that, back during the college application process, I consistently received emails from a lone college claiming to be located in the heart of Nebraska.
Creighton University by far set the record for the most persistent college in those months of decision and continues to be to this day, still sending me the occasional update or invitation to some event, program or seminar.
But I, an individual well-versed in the subject of geography, know far better than to fall victim to the void’s hick-town propaganda. I deleted those emails then and still delete them just as quickly as they come, for we all know that Nebraska isn’t a real place; it’s just one of those fairytale lands like Narnia, Neverland, and the Netherlands.
The emails go into Google’s convenient spam folder, neatly aside their siblings, the particularly persistent prince from Nigeria who keeps asking me for money, and the emails from Fordham reminding me to “please pay my tuition bill,” and to “stop stealing the printer paper from the Gabelli School of Business.” I don’t know what they’re talking about.
Finally, when I searched “Nebraska” on Google Images during my intense research for this article, the 8th result on the page was a bright red silhouette of the ever-elusive state with a large white question mark over it. Even the internet doesn’t know what Nebraska is.
As we all know today, the truth always comes from the internet and nowhere else, so how are we to believe in Nebraska if the internet doesn’t? Therefore, yes, Nebraska does seem to exist in a way, although only in our thoughts and confused musings about this strange and clearly fictional agricultural wasteland.
