Blind Prophecy

Even though I’ve got practically the entire floor of the dorm to myself for now, I decided to wander down to a study lounge for most of today. From there, I could look out the window at the Hudson River during the afternoon storms. Something about New York windows and the rain has always been really romantic to me.

Because of the weather, I decided to hit the student gym instead of going jogging in Riverside. I did that thing where I worked out until I had to stop because I was going to vomit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that intense a workout and the problem was simply that the room is stuffy, humid and stale. They really need to improve the air flow, even if it just means a couple oscillating fans.

I’m enjoying this program and look forward to the official start of classes. They’re building the homework level each day, which is a nice way of easing into the notoriously intense first year of law school. Anyway, there was a brief meet-and-greet reception planned tonight for the Stein Scholar program, but I only got to meet a couple people before I had to report to my class.

I was talking with my bestie, Jenn, this evening and she asked me how I was liking living in Manhattan so far. At the time, I said that I haven’t really done anything but poke my head around a few corners just off campus and visit Central Park. I’m too broke to go crazy with outings and adventures. But as I thought about it, I realized there are dozens of things that have already put me in a good mood about the move: the people on the streets and in my class literally come from every corner of the world and background, I’ve heard at least 5 languages on the streets, people are almost universally careful to follow a reference to “your spouse” with “or your partner,” the cute guy who lives in the building across the street who spent yesterday standing on his balcony wearing boxer shorts, the number of things I can walk to without any real effort (like grocery stores, libraries and parks), etc.

I understand why people romanticize small towns, smallish cities, and suburbia, there are things to recommend places like that… but I’m a big city guy. Give me a huge, messy, impersonal, dense, multicultural metropolis and I’ll feel more at home than I ever did in sprawling Cincinnati or heterogeneous Salt Lake.

Filed under: NYC, personal by Jere Keys