Learning Experiences

I hate to keep comparing New York City to England, but in the ways each experience has forced me to grow and to face myself and discover who I am and what I am capable of, they are proving to be very similar experiences. In both places, I am being forced to navigate new areas, to meet new people, and to establish new routines. I am forced to buy my own food, to cook extensively for myself, and to live amongst people whom I never met and will probably never see again after our short time being together.

Also, in both places, I am very out of my element: in England, I was literally a foreigner; in New York City, I am only metaphorically so. However, I oftentimes feel more foreign here than I ever did in England. When I flew across the Atlantic Ocean, at least I expected a few language barriers. Who knew I would have to learn a different vocabulary not only to work for a specialized magazine, but just to speak with my pop-culturized, fashion-savvy peers in the most popular city in America?

Meanwhile, in order to keep from going crazy, I am doing my best to chalk everything up to a “learning experience.” Looking for an apartment isn’t about finding one or else ending up curbside at Columbia University on August 2nd with no home, it’s about learning how to look for an apartment. I’ve never done this before, and it’s something I will certainly need to be able to do, pretty much for the rest of my life, so I may as well start now. Going to a job interview shouldn’t be a life-or-death experience, it should be another trial run, another way to be better prepared for my next interview, whether or not this particular company hires me. I’m not going to be “perfect,” and I don’t even know what a “perfect” candidate would look like to them, so all I can do is practice being prepared, professional, and as much “myself” as possible. Then, I can use the experience to build my interviewing skills for the next one while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best when I shake the HR representative’s hand and walk out that door.

Of course, I don’t always manage to think this way. Just yesterday, I was suffering from the “What am I doing” “I don’t know where I’m going to end up” “What if the end of July comes and I still have nowhere to live and no job” “Or worse, what if I have one and not the other because then I can’t even surrender and go home” panic attacks. As I have told many people recently: I feel like I am living in a never-ending finals week, only this time it’s Real Life.

But I’m trying my best to be level-headed and to just plow ahead and do what needs to be done. Really, what other choice do I have?