Have you seen the ladder? Everyone’s trying to climb it — faster than you. It’s made obvious out here: The social hierarchies are well-defined, priorities are decidedly self-serving and power is always venerated and chased. Even if these observations have not found their way into your lifestyle, it’s a stark contrast for those of us who came to GW from places further away. In my case, coming from Northern Colorado, I understood a much slower way of life before moving out east, a feeling that has resonated with my friends and peers in similar situations.
Promises. That’s what the East Coast is all about to kids from the less immediately relevant areas of this country. Everyone knows someone who left home for the big city, in search of a better life, an education or simply to roll the cosmic dice. Being that person, especially in the case of Colorado, where a large portion of people elect to stay in the state for college and life after that, is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. The person I am now could not exist without my choice to leave, but a part of me will always be at home.
I’m no stranger to the appeal of bright lights and big cities — it’s been where my compass has pointed ever since I had a choice in this world. I’ve had plenty of time to observe life in most of D.C. Beyond the suffocating humidity in the District, the social environment of the East Coast itself can prove to be just as taxing. It’s a place where everyone simultaneously thinks they themselves and nobody at all can change the world. People involved in the government and politics, for example, are both self-righteous and confident in their ability to affect change and resigned to a reality that it’s just “gridlock” and the system just has to function this way forever.
At its best, it is an intensely collaborative space capable of producing high-impact solutions to global issues, and at its lowest, a crushing rat race featuring several invisible socioeconomic barriers, serving to codify an elite class made up of the most affluent and privately educated. The stark realities about who really wields power in this country have become frighteningly clear as a byproduct of me being here for this long.
The East Coast deals in power. As the economic and legislative center of the United States, a great deal of people understand power to be the most valuable currency in use. Pressures about where you grew up, what school you went to, what internships you did, who you know in the industry were all new to me.
But I don’t see my interactions with people as transactional. And deconstructing the narrative that social events have to incorporate some element of “networking” has been one of my most important endeavors during my time in D.C., ever since it was something I was aware of. Comparing LinkedIn connections, pictures with important people and places traveled, just to impart some kind of worldly mature image on others has never appealed to me and is something I still haven’t gotten used to while studying in D.C.
Simply, the concept of outperforming the next person is not something I believe to be the way of life in the more western areas of this country. I’ve observed a phenomenon of strict stratification, where access to certain areas of life is more restricted by class, ethnicity or even personality than in other places. Enough time spent in large urban areas reveals the social ecosystem in which they operate. There is an equivalent phenomenon in places such as Los Angeles, where the same social hierarchies operate with the end goal of fame in mind.
This is not to say that Colorado, or the West in general, is a dreamland of endless acceptance and opportunity, but I’d like to think that people out there care a little more about each other than out here. Maybe that’s naive, maybe it’s reductive, but in some ways, I know it’s true. It’s the reputation — the narrative so widely represented in popular culture. The East Coast hustle, the kind but not nice, the New Yorker tougher than nails.
What makes the West so special in contrast to this is its lower social pressure. The goalposts that define success and the characteristics of a happy life are simply much more flexible. The concept of making an “honest living” is still in operation, as those with traditionally favored professions don’t really enjoy any special social regard. Financiers, schoolteachers, therapists and cattle ranchers all sit at the same table and watch the same teams every week. We value community over everything, and would proudly reject the city-life practice of walking past the person asking for help in the street.
East Coast life is not all bleak, though. There are many lives to be built out here, and the career ceiling is much higher. This is, after all, why many of us are here in the first place. I’ve found myself lost in government buildings, face-to-face with characters only known to me in the news and taking steps in my life that I truly could not have made back home. It’s a careful balance, poignantly philosophical at times. What would you give to have it all? Would you want it all, or is it all too much? Would you sell your dreams just to make a quick buck?
I try to not get lost in it all, to just have fun and remember that I’m allowed to be young and overwhelmed. If I have any advice for those thinking similarly, it’s to remember who you are, whoever that may be.
The culture may make you feel like the golden tickets can only be seen through golden glasses, but the ones that really matter are never too far from what you know. Trust what you feel, what you come from and where you want to go, and I promise you’ll be just fine.
Noah Edelman, a junior majoring in journalism, is an opinions writer.
