The College Debate: East versus West

After taking a road trip down and up the East coast, visiting a variety of states, and spending a week in Florida, I’ve been reminded of how much fun it is to be stuck in a car for eight or more hours. Especially when there are mini-wars over various snack foods. In the two weeks my family and I were traveling and vacationing, we traveled over 3,000 miles by car and managed to survive with minimal hotel Wi-Fi the whole time. Now that I am home and settling in for the upcoming school year, I will begin to post regularly once again.

Speaking of the upcoming school year, I have yet another post on college. I’m applying for colleges in September, and have been looking up schools all across the country. During the process, I discovered that there is a bit of an infamous debate over which U.S. coast is the best coast: East or West? For college, I would like to live in a city. In order to discern the pros and cons to each coast, I focused on cities. From the West I have Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. From the East I have Boston, New York, and Washington DC.

First of all, I’m going to start with the general view there is with each coast, or rather the characteristics of each coast’s character. The East coast is generally more conservative, formal, and crowded. The West coast is viewed as more liberal, easy-going, and open (space-wise). Let me tell you now that the closest I have lived to the West coast is Idaho, and I currently live on the East coast. I’m also the kind of person who is fascinated by places I have yet to go to. Thus, I will probably talk more about the West than the East.

My mentality is to go to a college that is near a place where I would like to live after college. For many years I have wanted to live in Seattle, mostly because of a Nickelodeon show called iCarly. So of course, I looked for colleges in the area, and found what I thought to be a perfect fit. After a few years on the East coast, it would be really nice to move somewhere a smidge more relaxed and “open-minded”. It is a different lifestyle that fascinates me. Then again, visiting my family would be difficult, what with the entire country between me and home. I then looked for colleges on the East coast. There are countless colleges in Boston that have what I want to study. New York City is nice, but a huge city with many distractions, at least for me. Then there’s Washington DC, which would certainly be an interesting place to live, being the nation’s capital.

I want to be a writer for a magazine eventually, maybe even work toward being an editor. I want to work with people to achieve a common goal by brainstorming ideas and then making them happen. I want to decrease world suck in whatever way I can. The East might have some of those things, but the West is thriving with life in comparison. For college, I might just stay near home, and then make the big move out West later on. But for now, I need to work on actually getting into college. Until then, I will continue exploring Chicago and Seattle through Google maps.