When you live in the financial district, it is easy to become uninspired.Unlike uptown, where the buildings are large and the streets are spacious, the buildings in the Financial District are packed like teeth.Braced by the scaffolding, they stand tall enough to block any and all sunlight.When it rains, the stink rises from the sewers and runs along the gutters, folding through the construction that hijacks the streets.With the stink and the dark, it can feel like you are living inside the mouth of a particularly unhygienic middle schooler.

That’s not to say that the Financial District does not have it’s shining bits of glory.The Freedom Tower, Battery Park, the Brooklyn Bridge… all of these remind us of a prettier city.

But if you live down here, it is easy to feel the drudgery of the day-to-day.It is easy to get tired of the piles of trash that suffocate the streets and the divots in the sidewalk that collect the rain.

So it’s only natural that the students at Pace University live in a state of exhaustion.Every day, I hear someone complain about feeling confined in the beige walls of the library, the green-tiled floors of the hallway, and the narrow, congested roads that populate the downtown area.It’s a shame honestly, that these students, who drove or flew to New York City for inspiration and opportunity, feel like their feet are trapped in the concrete.

So to my fellow Pace Students, and to anyone else who feels stuck in a rut, I strongly recommend rediscovering your home.Even the financial district- the metaphorical gross mouth of the city- has its little tokens of beauty.If you take the time to slow down and breathe as you walk down the street, it’s possible to make it feel less cramped and dreary.

I think in order to achieve the full effect of this, it’s important to try walking without listening to music.As much as we all love swaying down the street to the movie-soundtrack of our lives, it tends to distance us from the reality of what’s going on around us.It desensitizes us from the elements that make our environment interesting.Every once in a while, try taking out your earbuds to listen, I mean really listen, to the things that are happening around you.Try to work your way beyond the typical sounds of the city- the whirr of construction, the ambulance sirens, the car horns.Watch the people as they walk past you and listen to the swish of their pants, listen to the steam as it hisses from the subway grate, the store doors that close with an eeee or a whoomph, depending on how old the building is. Listen to the birds in the tiny parks, listen to the plastic bags as they crinkle and fold their way across the sidewalk.

Next, look up.Sometimes the streets feel so cramped that you can only think to look ahead.But when you look up and see how the buildings reach upwards, the Financial District becomes less suffocating. If you've ever looked at the building above the Papaya dog, you've noticed It’s actually quite charming, an old brick building that looks like it was built at the turn of the twentieth century. I looked above the McDonalds the other day and saw a guy leaning on his fire escape, in a tee-shirt in the middle of February, smoking a cigarette.There was something so fascinating about it. It was that moment when McDonald's was no longer just a McDonalds, it was a building and a home. That guy goes home every night to his apartment above a McDonalds. What does he do? Who does he love?

It’s in these moments walking down the street you’ve walked down a thousand times before and notice something new that the world seems to open up. Suddenly, the small part of the world you live in feels limitless.