Michigana

[nuncstans]

I'm tired of the lie that Midwesterners are straight-taahkin', haanest-dealin', friendly blond goyim. Midwesterners are mean!

anarqueso got me thinking about this with her post about community. Readers, I am rarely depressed. I mean, I get "depressed", like when it's gray outside and I'm bored and broke, and I have a hunger headache and I see a poster for

Comments

[gordonzola]

Are you friends with prof_southbay? Ann Arbor almost killed her. you should talk.

[nuncstans]

Done! Thanks for the suggestion.

[smallstages]

I followed you over here from the comment you left in anarqueso's journal because you seem to be realizing my worst fears. Here I am, almost forty, and applying to doctoral programs for next year in all kinds of places where I know no one -- one of them Ann Arbor. I keep telling myself that I make friends easily, that being a grad student (even a really old one) is a friends-making situation given the nature of the cohort, that I've always had to fight to get the alone time I need, but ...

But truthfully, I can't even remember the last time I felt lonely, and I'm wondering how I'm going to handle the isolation that might come with relocation to some place like Ann Arbor or Bloomington or Urbana after having spent the last fifteen years on the West Coast, ten of it in California and five of it in Oregon.

I was all, "How bad could it be?" But, apparently, it can be pretty bad, huh?

[nuncstans]

Well, I've been here less than two weeks, and I'm joining up mid-year, in JANUARY (as in, freezing-cold winter which itself causes more isolation). I think starting a doctoral program in September would be a radically different experience, because you'd be starting out with a group of people all in the same situation. My grad school experience was very mixed, and sometimes it felt very far away from my friends and family, but I did end up having a great group of friends. But yes, it can be bad, so definitely visit, and ask people what the bad parts of life there are (not just the people the department has chosen to escort you around).

[hunterxtc]

The Midwest doesn't really embrace people that are different... the theory of different being that if you have lived on the east or west coast, and you come to the wonderful Midwest, you must (a) be a spy for some government kabal or (b) you are a terrorist.

I will admit, I like Ohio on the whole- the people are generally much friendlier than anyone I met in Boston or New York City, and they are more willing to help you if you are down and out. Although I'm sure you will be able to adapt to the harsh reality that is "the Midwest", a lot of people will come here from the coasts and of course find fault with it, and they of course are going to be looked at with "the evil eye of the Midwest."

But then again, I probably got the same thing when I lived on the east coast.

[nuncstans]

The thing is, I hate it when people living in metropolitan areas look down on the periphery. I try not to make assumptions about people I don't know (but not-making-assumptions itself might be a metropolitan trait, because you know first-hand, from daily contact with a wide range of people, that you can't tell crazy by the accent or the suit it's wearing

[hunterxtc]

I asked my students a question the first day (did they want to read this thing in class, or at home) and nobody answered. I asked again. Silence. I said ok, raise your hand if you want to read this here. Everybody looked around, nobody raised their hand.

Could it just be because the students are lazy asses who didn't read the assignment, and they were just being honest? I had this same experience in my east coast schooling... but then again, most people at BU had been out partying the night before, so they perhaps had a legit reason not to answer. But there is always one know it all in class who wants to show off- I'm surprised your class didn't have one!

[nuncstans]

It was the first day!

"Everyone was so blond there that brunettes were often presumed to be from foreign countries."

[mistersmearcase]

So painful, because I remember all of this stuff from four years in Chicago, which is probably significantly less intense, being more urban

Re: "Everyone was so blond there that brunettes were often presumed to be from foreign countries."

[nuncstans]

I have a certain friend (well, really more louie_ludwig's friend) who, as a Jew coming out of the Midwest as a teenager identified as a person of color. From a NY perspective, it was somewhat ridiculed and roundly problematized, because there are totally Jews of color, and he wasn't it. But being here I can almost understand it--in that EVERYBODY HERE IS WHITE. This is the whitest place I have ever lived, and it's UNHEIMLICH. The only people of color who are visible are students, mainly east asian and south asian, some african american but the ratio is so depressing. You see hordes of identically-dressed, lockstep whiteness coming toward you, and it's like something out of a nightmare, all with their University sweatshirts and identical winterwear, as thought they're about to break into song-and-dance, and the whole thing is going to become The Midwest: The Musical.

[nuncstans]

Yes please! I have friends who came out of the Midwest, but they all CAME OUT OF the Midwest, so I think I may be biased since I don't really know anyone who proudly self-identifies as midwestern and has never expatriated, except certain members of my extended family whom I've never met because they hate Jews.