New York: Revisited

They say that first impressions are important, but sometimes, they can be very misleading. Last year, on Veteran’s Day weekend, I went to a conference in New York as a member of a club at school and I was fortunate enough to attend again this year as the president of that club. As honored as I was, it was a lot of work to receive funding from the school and coordinate flights and hotels for five other students and myself. Fortunately, the weekend was amazing and well worth what I put into it. Along with the reward of a successful weekend, I found that a lot of my thoughts of the city were different than I remember them being exactly 365 days before.

While the city seemed just as overwhelmingly large when we first landed, once we started navigating, it didn’t feel quite so big. Maybe it was because I was mostly traveling from place to place with other girls from my group and they were doing most of the navigating, but I felt as if one neighborhood or area led seamlessly into the next making the city feel a lot smaller than it felt last year.

I also thought that the subway was much more manageable than my first time around. This could have also been because I was traveling with others, and because last year, I took the subway from Williamsburg to Manhattan with a very large suitcase by myself. Nevertheless, travel by subway was much better this year and the machines that are used to buy tickets seemed much more user friendly than the machines in Chicago. But, I still can’t believe that you have to slide that flimsy card through the reader in order to pass through the gate. I don’t think that that particular first impression of the city will change for me.

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to fall in love with Central Park this year. Four of the other girls and I only walked through a fraction of the park for about an hour, but it was so beautiful to see all the leaves changing colors and falling. I was also fortunate enough to experience Wicked as my first Broadway show and it was amazing. I never understood all of the hype about that musical until I saw it for myself.

I think that strangest takeaway that I had from my second trip to New York was that I was not confident that I could live there. The first time I went, despite all the navigational troubles I had and the overwhelming feeling from the vastness of the city, I felt confident that I could live there someday. This time, there was something that changed my mind. Maybe it was colder this year, or I didn’t do as much on my own, but it really made me think and I have yet to be able to put my finger on the reason why.

I suppose I will have to revisit the matter yet again on my next trip to New York in May.