I’ll admit it. I was once a New York City supremacist. Lil ol’ me spent my tween years stomping (or biking)(or ripstik-ing) around my neighborhood after school, constantly looking for a new adventure. Once I got to high school and received my beautiful and glowing green student MetroCard, I hit the buses and trains to expand my adventures to new horizons. It felt like a blessing. 14 years old and the world was quite literally my oyster. I could go anywhere I wanted, to unexplored lands far and wide. Well, mostly Queens and Manhattan. But it was all mine, at the swipe of a card. I grew up on stories of my father’s rambunctious childhood adventures in Vietnam and I think it created an undying thirst for novel experiences in my own life. The freedom granted to me by the MTA allowed me to chase that, and in my mind it cemented New York City’s place as the greatest city in the world. But there comes a time when a child must leave their hometown.
After 18 years in Queens, I found myself in the cold and barren lands of Binghamton, New York. Actually, it’s Vestal — this school is in Vestal. I think every student here from the city eventually finds themselves trudging along the side of Vestal Parkway during their freshman year, not realizing that “walking” isn’t really a thing that happens around here. And that the buses stop running real early. It’s a canon event. I distinctly remember running across the wide-ass parkway with my suitemates, screaming and wanting to pull my hair out because I couldn’t understand why there were no buses from Goodwill at 6 p.m. (the sun was still out), why we had 15 seconds to cross eight lanes, why we had to walk next to cars going so damn fast and why there were no sidewalks. I couldn’t believe the place I had found myself in. What was a city girl like me doing here? Well, that was three years ago. And I must say that a girl has found that there actually is a lot to do here.
Walking along a highway turned into walking 10 minutes home after a night out on the West Side. Being scared of sharing a bedroom with someone turned into squeezing four people into two Onondaga twin XLs. Dreadful mealtimes at dining halls turned into loitering there for hours while entertaining an endless, rotating cast of characters. Sitting on empty bleachers and sulking turned into sitting on the first floor roof of my house and pretending that I’m in a Midwest emo music video. Nights spent on Discord turned into nights spent moshing in random people’s basements. Living with strangers turned into living with people whom I adore and will absolutely dread leaving. Life here is slower, but maybe it means that I needed a breather anyway.
I went back to Vietnam in 2023 and visited some new cities there. I found myself preferring the slower, calmer, mid-sized city of Can Tho more than the hustling and bustling larger cities that I used to consider my “natural habitat.” I don’t know. Maybe I’m not who I thought I was, and I don’t need what I thought I needed. There’s been so much that I’ve grown to love here, like the proximity of everything and the tight webs woven by everyone I know knowing everyone else I know. I used to want these four years to be over as quickly as possible so that I could get my butt back to the Big City. But now it’s April and I’m finding myself poking around Apartments.com hoping there’s a perfect leftover two-bedroom listing. At least that way, I would still be able to live with one of my dear roommates for a little longer. And prolong the inevitable.
Life must go on. Far too often, I’ve let the world turn and leave me behind. This time I’ll have to just follow the winds. I’ll get swept up and blown back to Queens. I’ll be an hour and a half away from cool events again. My friends will be scattered across countless cities and out of reach once more. Despite the gloomy weather, unreliable transit, rent and utilities, expensive ahh soju, sticky frat floors, garbage on Murray Street, assignments on assignments, deadlines on deadlines, crippling illnesses, darkroom fumes, distance from my family and freshman nights full of tears, I’ll look back and miss these four years in bumblefuck Upstate N.Y. Binghamton, you weren’t so cruel to me after all. Maybe New York City has some competition in my personal rankings these days.
Melanie Nguyen
Historian
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