Like every soon-to-be college graduate from a \u201cprestigious\u201d university, I want to move to New York City post-grad. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I check StreetEasy every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
StreetEasy, for all my non-NYC-pilled readers, is a real estate platform similar to Zillow, exclusive to the NYC metropolitan area. It\u2019s a platform where you see how brutal the NYC rental market truly is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some days, I\u2019m realistic, filtering for 2-beds under $3,000 anywhere in the city. Other days, I\u2019m already mentally decorating my $3,000 studio in Park Slope or the Lower East Side, convincing myself that it\u2019s \u201cworth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rumors are true: shoeboxes going for $4,000, 6-story walkups with no laundry, roach infestations, garden units prone to flooding and apartments without even a window unit (I\u2019ve had enough of that this summer to last a lifetime).\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet, apartment showings have lines wrapping around the block, with 50 people waiting outside like it\u2019s Myka on a Friday night.<\/p>\n
Despite this, I still find myself wanting to move there. Forget targeting the Big Four or the MBB: It\u2019s NYC or bust.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a self-proclaimed \u201cBeli-fluencer,\u201d I can confidently say the food scene is unmatched. NYC offers some of the country\u2019s best \u2014 and often cheapest \u2014 food from nearly every cuisine imaginable, whether it\u2019s Indian food in Jackson Heights or Taiwanese restaurants in Elmhurst. And not to mention Mimi\u2019s, my frozen yogurt love, of course.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, there\u2019s the walkability. As someone who\u2019s walked Manhattan tip-to-tip and trekked from Evanston to \u201cThe Bean,\u201d I\u2019m ready to make walking my main method of transport. 15 miles is nothing in a city where there\u2019s always a new neighborhood to wander into and explore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, to me, NYC only seems attainable for the select few.<\/p>\n
In my warped and naive perception, moving to New York immediately after graduation is the clearest sign of success. It means you landed that dream job with a stable source of income and you can move somewhere that people can only dream of calling home for their whole lives. You didn\u2019t just survive the New York rental market: You won.<\/p>\n
This summer, it seems like everyone is in NYC but me, and it\u2019s hard not to feel a little jealous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every day I scroll through my Beli feed to see at least a dozen new posts of NYC eats. Even the corporate slop bowls look better there.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help that TikTok spoon-feeds me apartment tours in the East Village and \u201cWhat I Spend in a Week in NYC\u201d videos every time I open the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If seemingly everyone else is there, what does it say that I\u2019m not?<\/p>\n
As a rising senior, I feel like I\u2019m always three steps behind everyone else. I don\u2019t have a job lined up or a clear idea of what I want to pursue beyond this NYC pipe dream. Meanwhile, we\u2019re just around the corner from return-offer season, and it feels like everyone else\u2019s biggest senior-year dilemma is whether to live in Brooklyn or Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Deep down, I know my worldview is irrational. Living in New York at 22 isn\u2019t a measure of intelligence, ambition or success.<\/p>\n
Yet I can\u2019t help myself from consuming NYC content and obsessively checking StreetEasy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll see you in Park Slope next June. And if not, well, I guess I flopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We can retroactively delete these stories, right?<\/p>\n
David Sun is a rising Medill senior and author of \u201cPerpetual Flop.\u201d He can be contacted at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like every soon-to-be college graduate from a \u201cprestigious\u201d university, I want to move to New York City post-grad.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-303539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}