I am Adrian Savage: student of Macaulay Honors College, Brooklyn; contender for a CUNY BA in a double major of English and Criminal Psychology; and future prosecuting attorney. I chose to enroll with Macaulay due in large part to the opportunities I knew it would afford. To live in New York City, to have access to internships and study abroad, to be able to participate in something as grand as an Honors college, were all things I didn’t want to pass up. For this class in particular, I am excited to become better acquainted with the city I only met a few months ago.
For the most part, I have no working knowledge of Brooklyn’s immigration history. Five months ago I still lived in my small hometown in northern Utah, and was therefore underexposed to New York City ethnic movements. As a new transplant, I have also been, up to this point, unaffected (directly) by those movements. But I do feel the effects now, as I walk down the street and become witness to America’s true melting pot of culture, race, religion, and every other category that’s big enough to be ‘melted.’
My own social background can be traced to exactly the middle. I am an average girl, Caucasian, from the average middle-class family, from your typical small-ish town. Since moving here, I think I can honestly say that all of this middleness has had little to no affect on the life I’m living now. Nor on my family, since they remain in Utah. Many students my age come from exactly the same background, yet I am one of the few who moved out of state for college. I don’t know why this is, but as my social background is no different from many others, I can’t see how it would have influenced my decision to apply to Macaulay. However, my current social status is a different question altogether: I am a poor college student, fixating anxiously on the stress of student loans. The affect this has on me? I am unusually tight-fisted for a person who lives in the greatest city in the world.
In the end though, I don’t think my social status hasn’t mattered thus far in the life I lead. I’ve met with no one who would look condescendingly on how I operate. No discrimination has occurred, and as far as I know, neither has the opposite. Blanket acceptance is all I’ve experienced. New York City (and its people) understand.
As for the question of whether or not the challenges/promises of NYC have influenced the work I hope to do, I’d have to say no. I came to NYC with the future of my work already in mind, and thus far New York City has done nothing to change my dreams. Certainly New York City holds more opportunity for me to complete that work, but it has held no sway in determining what that work will be.
Because I am a non-native (to NYC), immigration and other NYC cultural experiences have not had an affect on myself or my family’s traditions, values, beliefs, etc. That’s not to say that immigration in general had no affect, only that immigration as relates to New York City has had no affect. For the purpose of sharing, I will tell you that my family came from Sweden, Scotland, Wales, and the other various European countries. They arrived in America before Ellis Island opened as an immigration processing port and after the transcontinental railroad. They landed in the USA somewhere unknown to me (one branch of the family briefly settled in St. Louis), then took the train out west. I have no idea if they came in through New York City, and my father is hazy on the subject too, so this is something I am in the process of discovering.
I have many favorite places in NYC. One of them is the 24 hour luncheonette, “Donuts and Diner on 7th”, in Brooklyn. Four years ago, my family took a vacation around Christmas time here to Brooklyn, and twice a day, every day, of that trip, my father and I walked to that diner for hot chocolate, a box of donuts, and whatever else tickled our fancy (the fries come fresh with every order, and have the most satisfying, greasiest, crunch). It will forever be a special place to me, and whenever I happen to be in the neighborhood, I always stop for a donut. And now my father will be visiting come April, so you can bet that we’ll be back.
As requested, here are 2 pictures: the Donut shop, and a picture of myself (when I was in Africa a couple years ago).
