Purdue University, West Lafayette
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I’m writing this review from San Jose California, where I’m currently on an internship. I’ve spent a total of 9 months on the west coast in two separate trips to this city, and I have to admit that I still haven’t found a happy medium between the friendliness of the midwest and the cultural diversity of the west coast. It seems that at Purdue and my hometown of the Chicago suburbs I had no problem making friends and having a good time, but any real cultural exposure required a trip to a big city.
San Jose, on the other hand, has an awesome cultural scene (check out Japantown, the San Jose Museum of Art, as well as nearby Palo Alto). However, this cosmopolitan atmosphere comes with a price. My coworkers are gifted people but we’re almost too diverse (hailing from everywhere from Kashmir, India to the Middle East) to find a lot of common ground with each other.
When I first got to Lafayette it drove me nuts that the town had so much of a “country” feel too it. But after being out in the West Coast I have to admit that overall I had much more fun hanging out with close friends at Hunter’s Pub than I did walking through San Francisco by myself.
I have no doubt that I could make plenty of lifelong friends out here given more time. But the thing that I’ve learned is that it’s the people you share experiences with, not the location that they take place in, that makes a town fun to live in.
over 5 years ago
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