Not New York

My friends don’t ask me how I’m doing anymore. Instead, they ask, “Where will you be next year?” with the kind of slowly escaping grin that makes it clear they eagerly expect the question to be returned their way. This little charade would be cute if it wasn’t so repetitive, for the answer, I’ve found, is almost always the same. I’m a graduating senior at The University of Chicago, where nearly two-thirds of graduates find themselves entering the fields of finance or consulting. I asked a friend recently if he knew anyone not moving to what seem to be our country’s four “magnet” cities: New York, Boston, D.C., or San Francisco. He thought for a minute and then asked, “Does New Jersey count?”

My friends have read the stacks of literature about young people paralyzed by the decisions that stand before them, budding graduates struck dumb by the enormity of a uniquely modern weight: that we get to forge our own destiny, that ours is a world where what we are is what we make ourselves out to be. But unlike the listless military officers, tuberculosis-envying sanatorium patients, whale-chasing shipmen, or train-hopping beatniks of yore, our generation of college graduates has gotten its shit together. Following the advice of an army of career counselors and advisors, our generation has written our cover letters, tapped our “connections,” and leaped not toward adventure but toward security (financial and otherwise). I worry that in doing so, we’ve opted out of the kind of experiences by which one comes to distinguish oneself, discover one’s place, and thereby leave their youth behind them. I worry that, tucked away in the familiar comforts of the magnet city, our generation of marching professionals has yet to fully come of age.

There’s a frictionlessness to early career life in the magnet city. It is the logical next step, where the pipeline spits us out, where we wind up if we diligently attend to our studies and follow everyone’s advice. Friends who have moved to New York tell me elatedly that “this is where everyone is!” But such statements seem to betray a hidden anxiety that secretly, we’re afraid to leave the university ethos — its center-of-things, with-the-grain, inconsequentially heady sensibility.