Tag Archives: New York

After a year, I’ve synthesized it down. What it is that I don’t like about New York. My normal caveat, of course, that this only applies to me. My dislike of NY doesn’t mean you have to dislike it to. Strangely, I’ve found many New Yorkers can’t take this – my dislike of NY seems to drive them crazier.

Anyway, why I dislike New York. It’s not the difficult of living here…though cubersome and overly complicated.

It’s not the lack of nature.

It’s not the congestion

It’s when people tell me this.

“That’s just how New York it.”

or

“You’ll come to love the chaos.” (or disorganization, attitude, etc)

In those statements is, hidden within, is something a little more sinister. New York City is big, cumbersome, bureaucratic, inefficient, and it can’t be changed. We have to love it for what it is.

In San Francisco, people are always actively working to make the city better – laws are passed to make Government more efficient (at attempts to) and any threat to local cultural events are taken seriously. Protests are a part of life. People love SF and can complain about it, and then work to make it better. Whether they succeed or not is another question, but at least they try. There, people see the city for what it is a – a collection of people who can, together, make the city great.

New Yorkers speak about their community, about the solidarity, but I rarely see it. Here, the city is the living being, and we are just part of it.

It’s a minor attitude difference, but I think its at the root of what I don’t like about NYC. I’m to accept that shitty housing market, the inefficiencies, the dirtiness, as part of what makes NY great. Why?

Now, I’m still enjoying my time here – and enjoy a lot of things about the city, and love Columbia as a place of learning. But I want to live in place where people are empowered, where people treat each other with respect, and where we are the city. That, above all, is why I won’t be staying here.

So…where will I go?

The semester is chugging along, slowly, but surely. A lot had changed in my life in the past few months. Truthfully, I’ve been thinking a ton these past few months, about my present life, and my future. Grad school is only one step towards me becoming the person that I want to be.

NYC is lonely. Though I’ve slowly made some friends here, school has been so time consuming that I’ve had little time to socialize, thus, I haven’t yet made any close friends here. Several, though, came to visit, which was great, but only highlighted what I’m missing here. I’ve yet to come to grasp with the fact that my friends are so scattered around the world, and that I’ll never be able to have them all in the same place. Sometime, I see how this is a good thing, but sometime, I see the bad side.

I also ended my first serious relationship, the hardest decision that I ever had to make. Distance and reality, mixed with my own need to look inside myself, were the main factors. Nothing bad happened, and we’re still talking frequently.

Next semester, things will settle down, I hope. I’m looking for an internship abroad next summer, either in Indonesia or in French-speaking West Africa. Let me know if you have any contacts in either region. I’m going to begin writing more articles again, so keep an eye out for that too, and photos! Coming very soon!

First – apologies for the website being down for so long. I had a confluence of issues with my web host (mixed with my wallet being stolen) and my domain registrar simultaneously)

It seems unbelievable that I’ve been in New York City already for a month and a half. Time passes differently in a place where you rarely see the sky. In summer time, you’re merely avoiding the sky and the sun, in the baking city that always feels much hotter than it actually is.

I never loved NY. I came here for one reason – school, and this inner feeling that I should give New York a chance sometime in my youth. Columbia was my top choice, and studying international policy in NYC seemed like a no-brainer. But that was it. I was scared about the urbanity, scared about the lack of nature, and scared about the lack of good Mexican food too.

So, my initial impressions of NYC. Feel free to post your own comments below.

1) Nature. I’m sick of people telling me when I miss nature, that “well, there is central park.” I’ve also barely met anyone who goes camping, or does outdoors activities (going to Long Island or Jersey beaches doesn’t count as outdoor activities). People here really lack any connection to nature.

2) Rules. Compared to the west coast, where rules seem to be made to be broken, New York seems to have rules that have to be broken, with layers of middlemen, just to survive.

3) Can’t let go. I’ve, many times, had people who feel it necessary to complain about one of my actions, possibly wrong or illegal, but in the end, doesn’t affect them at all. Usually, there are bystanders. I think it’s cause people are so miserable, they need to spread the wealth.

Everyone keeps telling me I’ll love it. Sometimes, I think they’re telling me that to convince themselves. As for me, I’ll enjoy my two years here, but NYC has nothing on the other cities I’ve lived in the US. So far, I prefer LA, SF, SD, and even Kansas City.

I can’t fathom people who love a place that is so artificial. Sure, it’s fun. Sure, it’s diverse. But it’s a concrete jungle, a city that’s alive at night, that’s artificially hot, where people leave the doors open. Other contradictions bemoan me – how can New Yorkers claim to be green when there are no recycle bins anywhere, no citywide compost, and the stores are allowed to keep their doors open, wasting loads of energy?

The next step in my life path has been set. I’ll be joining the halls of privilege, ivy lined with prestige, at Columbia University this fall. Here is an account of my journey.

I can’t remember the first time that I heard about Columbia. Probably, it was back in elementary school, when they told us about the greatest Universities in the world, the Ivy Leagues. But New York City was nothing but a ghostly enigma to me, a city I’d never seen, didn’t have any interest in seeing. My life was pointed decidedly westward, towards my birthplace, my destiny firmed in California.

It wasn’t until graduation, and not until I’d visited many of the great cities of Europe before I, along with many of my friends from California, set foot in New York. Cold, a big suffocating, and drab, the city left me eager to learn more. I returned two years later, after traveling around the world, with a new goal in mind.

Graduate School.

I remember stepping into the large, grey concrete edifice that is the School of International Public Affairs, SIPA, taking the slow elevator up to the conference room. I immediately felt inadequate. The person in front of me was a graduate of Oxford, and had worked in Africa for many years. To my right, a Harvard graduate who’d had several articles published.

And me? A guy who graduated with an unrelated degree (communication) and who’d just spend 13 months traveling.

–

You know the rest of the story (if not, click on these tags – San Francisco, Barack Obama, 2008, and Iowa). Two years later, with a much stronger resume, and more focus, I reapplied, got accepted, and this fall, I’m eager, if nervous, to start the next adventure in my life.

Life works in strange ways. I departed, after quitting my job, to Europe for five weeks, mostly to decompress from two years of office work. I’d quit my job without knowing if I’d gotten into any of the three schools that I had applied for, nor with any other plan if graduate school failed. I had about five thousand dollars that slowly began to get burned by the exchange rate in Europe (not as fast as expected, though, thanks Greece!)

I ignored those thoughts and tried, successfully, to have fun. Then I flew home, exhausted. The next morning, I woke up. Checked my email while my parents drank coffee.

Columbia.

Oh shit.

….

I GOT IN!

Thank you life!

—

So I’m moving to New York this fall. I couldn’t have imagined this five years ago. But it does mean the end of my California dream. For my entire life, California was the beacon of hope, and for the past nine years since I graduated from College, it was essentially, my home. Though I left often, whether to study abroad, travel, or return to Kansas for a summer, it was my base. Now, I am truly saying goodbye as life leads me in other directions.

Bon Voyage, California. You’ll always be in my heart, but, I don’t think I’ll be back.