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I think it’s important for everyone to live in a city once. Not to visit for a weekend, or stop for a day in between a road trip, but to live in it. To take residence. A big city like Chicago offers people the chance to live in the thick of it all, but not to feel overwhelmed. Chicago offers that happy medium in between, and I can only relate it to when you visit other countries. Yes, I loved Madrid, but Barcelona had so much more flair. Rome is indescribable, but Florence so much more romantic. The same is true here. New York is
epic, but Chicago is the heart of the country.

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Graduate school offers a good amount of time to make changes in your life, and to plan to come out better on the other side. It helps when you’re surrounded by an inspiring environment pushing you to keep up with the rest of the world. Physically, and psychologically, just traveling downtown to the campus provides me with the inspiration to try my best. It is hard not to feel the energy of the throngs of people passing by, the unsyncopated rhythm of the honks in the street, the installations in windows, and signs for new events abound, all asking for my consideration.

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Though I know I can’t see or do all that I want, it makes me feel proud to belong to the community at Columbia where I always see such great things happening around me. The successes of others at this school–from either emails, reading about it in the newspaper, or experiencing events myself–helps me feel connected to the continuous busy work ethic this school produces. It all supports my choice for choosing Columbia. They say an object in motion, stays in motion. But I think that maybe…an object not in motion, surrounded by other objects whooshing by, will get their own ball rolling.