There’s nothing quite like leaving the city.
I was excited to leave New York City for college, thinking that I had long been a misplaced soul; a country baby accidentally delivered by a confused stork to city parents. Plaid flannel shirts far outnumbered the jeans in my closet, and I wore the same broken-down pair of sneakers day in and day out, while my high school classmates adopted the styles of the city around us.
But even if I was wearing dirty brown work pants, I always cruised the streets with my head down, eyes looking straight ahead, like any New Yorker.
I read on the subway, and don’t talk to anyone who isn’t a friend. I walk fast, I talk fast, and I get mad when the deli takes more than two minutes to make my turkey sandwich. I’ve got places to be, and people to see, so don’t get in my way.
College in Saratoga Springs wasn’t too much of change. Skidmore College is in many ways just an extension of the Upper West Side, with a little upstate flare mixed in. Almost everyone I met at school thought the right to abortion was an important human right, that the Second Amendment might as well be gotten rid of, that Bush was the devil’s spawn, and that there was little more important in life than a pair of UGG boots and a giant pair of Prada sunglasses (and, no, I’m not just talking about women here).
Thirty percent of my peers came from New York State, with a heavy representation from New York City and the surrounding areas—you know, kids from Westchester who would introduce themselves thusly: “Hi, my name is Katie, and I’m from Chappaqua; it’s right near Manhattan.” Right … and I’m from Brooklyn, it’s just downtown from mid-town. I didn’t realize until much later that this little bubble of Manhattan exists in a vacuum.
In that interim period that every liberal arts student seems go through between graduating college and starting a career, I was back in New York City. It felt pretty much like it always had, as if I’d never left. I hung out with high school friends, visited my favorite places, and was surrounded by people just like me.
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