Real Life
For the past few months, I've been working on my "Pittsburgh list". See, I moved here last August after working at a startup in Boston, and I'm still deciding what to think of the place. So, I'm making a list:
Pittsburgh pros:
- cheap food and drink
- good beer selection
- lots of young folks
- champion football team
- that feeling of discovery you get when you crest the top of some random hill on a sunny day and you can suddenly see an entire neighborhood appear in the valley beneath you
- cheap, ample airport parking
Pittsburgh cons:
- postindustrial
- rainy
- dirty
- crazy
- quarterback too dumb to drive legally, helmet-edly
From 2002-2005 I was living in Cambridge, MA, which is pretty much one of my favorite places to be, especially when the weather is nice.
During my undergrad days, I was living in Poughkeepsie, NY. Not much to say about Poughkeepsie, except that it's good not to be living there anymore. Also that the Hudson Valley can be gorgeous.
Before I got to Vassar, I lived in Arlington, Va, which is just outside of Washington DC. This sort of makes my life difficult when people (especially from the northeast) ask me where I'm from. I barely consider myself a Virginian (my parents are both New Yorkers), and I certainly don't consider myself a Southerner. The fact of the matter is, northern Virginia might as well be a separate state. I tell people that I'm from Virginia, and I can just see them wondering privately how big my tobacco plantation is. For the time being, I've settled on telling people I'm from the DC area.
Anyway, Arlington has the advantage of having some really good schools. I actually ended up attending both Yorktown High School and H-B Woodlawn for high school. H-B is a pretty neat school, actually - it's an alternative education program that draws from the whole county. If you've got a bit of time, look at the school's official profile - I think it's pretty cool. Also interesting but slightly less eloquent is the Underground Student Handbook, which describes the school from a student's perspective.