<p>This is just my opinion, of course, but I find midwesterners to be friendlier and more down to earth. I grew up in the NYC metro area. I went to undergrad in New York City. I had a lot more fun in the Midwest at Ann Arbor, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I did graduate work, than I ever did in the Northeast. I’ve also lived in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and several other states. I hated living and working in the Boston area. I absolutely loathe Boston, although I grudgingly concede the city has some superior restaurants. But as a student, it’s unlikely you’d get to patronize any of their superior restaurants anyway, unless your family is wealthy.</p>
<p>I was born amidst the urban thing. I’ve worked on Wall Street and in the Manhattan financial district. But I found life a lot more pleasant for sixteen years in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Unfortunately, a corporate transfer has brought me back to the Northeast.</p>
<p>I’ll try to be more specific: I hate mass transit. I hate subways and public buses. I hate traffic jams. I hate toll roads, toll bridges, and toll tunnels. I hate ridiculously expensive parking ramps and places where there is no parking on the streets. I hate cities in which people think it’s okay to double park. For all these reasons, I found going to college and working in the Northeast a major pain in the you-know-what, and I find Northeastern culture (these are my people) rude and fairly ethnically/racially balkanized, and cynical — in comparison to Midwesterners. Northeasterners are also a bit too direct–like me. All things are relative, of course. Now, I realize most Oberlin students are from outside the Midwest. But whenever I call the college and speak with people in different departments, I’m talking staff not faculty, most of those folks are Ohioans or at least midwesterners. I’m the curious type so I tend to ask people on the phone where they are from, especially if I detect any trace of an accent. It’s just a lot different experience than when I’ve spoken with staff at Amherst and other Northeastern schools. A lot more easy going, a lot friendlier. </p>
<p>I find too many northeasterners have a huge bias about this region of the country. To me the Heartland is the best living in America. I wish I could go back. I’m African American, and I’d rather live in a lily white state like Iowa than in New York or Massachusetts or Washington, D.C. I loved it out there. While I was there, I met and married a girl from a small rural farm town in southern Minnesota near the borders with Iowa and South Dakota. I’ve been a happy man ever since.</p>
<p>That Oberlin is in the Midwest (although barely in the Midwest) is a huge advantage in its favor, in my opinion.</p>