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| May 12, 2008 |
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College students talk about the differences between East and West Don’t expect the people you meet ‘Back East’ to pronounce ‘Oregon’ correctly. And if you say you’re from Portland, they’ll assume you’re from Maine,” a Northwest student attending college in the East recently remarked. “‘Back East’! I never knew I lived ‘Back East’ until I came here,” countered a student from the East who had never heard that expression until he attended college in the Northwest. Regional differences. The differences between East and West. Here in the Northwest we talk about a lifestyle, a point of view, even a cuisine that we claim to be distinctly our own. But is there truly a quality to life here in the Northwest that is different from that found in other parts of the country, in particular the eastern part? If so, how do Northwest students who choose to go to college in the East react to those differences? What better way to find some answers to these questions than to speak to those students, born and raised in the Northwest, who have chosen to boldly cross the country to attend college in the East? And what more opportune time than this recent winter break when the newly initiated – just three months away from home – would be returning to the Northwest replete with this new regional experience? In anticipation of the opportunity to question Northwest returnees from that supposed other world “Back East,” I provided myself with a reality check by seeking out young people from the East who had chosen the opposite journey–college “Out West.” By asking what is different about the Northwest I’d see if I had a match to the responses about the East given by students from the Northwest. It was the last springlike day of November when I canvassed the Reed College Campus, approaching groups of students sitting outside at tables, sprawled on the lawn talking, sitting on steps waiting for their next class to begin, with the query, “Anyone here from the East Coast?” I was pleasantly surprised to be welcomed with both interest and enthusiasm by students who without hesitation responded in the positive. Their friends nearby even registered disappointment at being excluded from my survey simply by not being from the East. As winter break approached and Northwest students started trickling home, I began my survey in earnest. My data base soon expanded to an assortment of students from both the East and West whose experiences and observations seemed relevant to the discussion at hand. For example, in questioning students at Stanford University I obtained broader observations about the West (rather than specifically the Northwest) from East Coast students and some interesting comments about the East Coast students from their Northwest classmates. An interesting cross-check. Although an occasional student from either side of the country said there’s not much difference between East and West or “yeah, there’s a difference but it’s hard to verbalize,” I found most students had a lot to say and were pleased that someone had finally asked the question. When a group of Reed students I approached said, “we were just talking about that last night,” I knew I was timely. As my conversations proceeded with these various groups of students who represented large and small, urban and isolated, highly and not so highly competitive institutions of higher learning, common themes quickly emerged. Most students, no matter their coast of origin, had a lot to say about differing communication styles. Pacific Northwest kids definitely perceive the East Coast kids as more aggressive, assertive and pushy – one student noticed that even their posture seemed more aggressive – and characterized them as trying to direct what’s going on, no matter what it is that’s going on. One student observing a difference in the way East Coast students verbally communicate described them as: “on edge, hyper, fast paced, and in your face.” Pretty strong! I can’t help but think that since he is at one of the most competitive Ivies he may be faced with some of the more extreme examples. He went on to describe “verbal competition even when you’re relaxing; they’re always ‘on’.” In the East, he feels that one is judged by how one verbally presents oneself; that group domination is determined by who talks the most and the fastest and about the most things. “Your value,” he said, “comes from what you can contribute verbally to the group and how well you can succeed as the one who is being listened to whether you’re talking about something important or mundane.” So much talk is alien to his experience in Portland of hanging out with friends and saying little. This Oregon student may be glad to know that his observations are confirmed by a Reed student from Washington, D.C., who feels people back home are more opinionated, gutsy, and forceful. He said that he misses “the outspokenness and abrasiveness of the East,” that it makes him feel more comfortable because he knows “where people are coming from.” He was quick to add that abrasiveness is not perceived as that in the East. Another Reed student who hails from New Jersey felt that her more outfront approach, useful in asserting herself in the dense crowds of the urban East, appeared rude in the Northwest. She also observed that there seems to be a lack of “street language” here. In the East, she said, she understands people better, knows her place in the scheme of things, “You know, through body language, proper distance, whether to look people in the eye. . .”
Much of this talk about different communication styles relates to the different pace of life in these two regions. Students from the Northwest observed that “people move faster on the East Coast,” while students from the East, when asked about life in the Northwest, routinely began with, “It’s so laid back here.” Students from the East missed the pace and energy of home; they like that hectic, rushed feeling that seems to them more vital. As one student put it, “At first, people felt slow here and I was impatient with them.” And while these students from the East missed the hectic pace of home, Northwest students in the East missed the more mellow atmosphere of their home, “where you can take it easy, look around and appreciate your surroundings.” Many students from both the East and the West commented that students from the East are more directed; they seem to know already what they want to do. This concern about their future may be what led one Northwest student to say that his East Coast acquaintances are too focused on being busy: “They don’t seem to know the joy of poetry, painting, the outdoors.” The slower pace of the Northwest generates a friendlier atmosphere where, according to one student, “people smile, make eye contact, and let you in when you drive.” A Northwest student described being pushed out of line by “some woman” at the JFK airport, then arriving home in Portland to signs of Coffee People, Birkenstocks, and a woman who stopped her to say, “I love your shoes.” A student from Rhode Island attending school in the Northwest said he “was quite shocked” and “completely distrusted their motives” when strangers here would smile, say “hi” and start a conversation. A Northwest student at Yale explains the difference in friendliness and niceties in the East: “There is less courtesy between people because each person is more intent on getting somewhere, on pursuing his or her own direction.” An atmosphere that is less conducive to friendliness is also less conducive to making friends quickly and so, at least initially, Northwest students expressed feelings of loneliness on their eastern campuses. They arrive with memories of good friends back home and expectations of making new friends to fill the void and so register surprise when it isn’t easy to do. While the Northwest students often arrive knowing no one, the majority of their classmates who are from the East already have acquaintances from their previous schools or neighborhoods. Many students from the Northwest said their first friends tend to be from the West or Midwest because these students seem more familiar to them. One student acknowledged that “college friends are totally different; they can’t replace your old friends so you shouldn’t expect them to.” It is interesting to hear Northwest students at West Coast colleges describe their East Coast classmates as “not typical because they are friendly.” This observation is based on either what they’ve personally seen in the East or heard from friends on campuses there. While it may be true that by the very choice to travel here these East coast kids are not representative Easterners, it may also be just as likely that the change of locale changes how they interact with others. A Northwest student who spent her college years in the East at both large and small schools concluded that: “As individuals people are the same, but in the City people treat and act toward you differently because of different priorities and experiences.” Students from the Northwest have a different perception of the East depending on whether they attend a large urban university or an isolated small liberal arts college, particularly in New England. They perceive students at the smaller schools as narrow and sheltered and those at the larger universities as more worldly and diverse. At the smaller isolated schools students from the Northwest described a conservative, traditional and closed society that they found difficult to enter. They also reported a different social behavior where students “have more of a front, are more image conscious, and less open and outwardly friendly because of a concern with the impression they are making on others.” They had a “tougher shell as if they didn’t want to expose themselves,” said one student, “and they came across as cold.” She added that although it was more difficult to get to know them, once you did they were, in fact, friendly. While some students complained about their small colleges others were quite happy there. A student at a small competitive school known for its intensity and intellectualism described it as a friendly place where people were tied by their interest in academics, not by a sense of who they were or where they came from. On the other hand, a student who left dissatisfied with the atmosphere of one of these smaller schools and who now attends a large urban university described her current fellow students as more savvy in a variety of ways: “they’re more grown up, they’ve had more experiences, they ‘know what’s going on,’ and they know how to handle themselves. You can see it in their eyes.” Since these students are more independent and less likely to form groups, “you meet people on their own terms.” She also said that contrary to popular belief, she has found people to be friendly, helpful, easy to meet, and not rude. She added that at the small school where she had been “you studied because there was nothing else to do, but here in the city you study and then apply it to what’s around you.” She acknowledged, however, that had she gone to such an urban university her first year away from home, she may have been overwhelmed. Another student who has attended both a large and small East Coast school agreed that you work less when there are more things to do, and that in a large city school where students are more independent the social structure is not as important. The smaller schools, on the other hand, offer a self-contained world with student constructed social groups and activities. Northwest students in the East, while acknowledging the diversity of urban areas, noted that as you move away from these centers, especially to the smaller towns in New England, it is noticeably not diverse. This was confirmed by East Coast students in the Northwest who referred to “back home in the suburbs where everyone’s the same.” However, some students from the East Coast commented on the lack of diversity in the Northwest: “It’s so white here,” said one, and another from Washington, D.C., “I miss being surrounded by ethnicity–the music, the food, the smells.” Others acknowledged that it is differently diverse here – “I’d never had Mexican food until I came West” – and that, although there may not be as many cultures represented, there are greater concentrations of the ones that are, particularly Asian and Hispanic. We’ve all seen that New Yorker cover where only a small part of the map of the United States belongs to the rest of us. So do they have a superiority complex in the East? An NYU student from the Northwest says, “Yes, they do think they’re superior in the East, that they’re more on the cutting edge of things. But,” he added, “here we care about different things. And about those things we think we’re on the cutting edge.” Another student said, “They think they’re more cultured because they have access to it even if they don’t access it.” A recent Princeton graduate from the Northwest was especially outraged when a roommate told her “she would never consider living outside of the East because her children could not be well educated elsewhere.” (“So how did I make it here,” she wondered.) Here in the Northwest a student from the East felt cut off from the rest of the world because there is less access to information. She added that the television and print news, especially international, was wholly inadequate. Many Northwest students commented that while students they meet think the East Coast is more important, they also romanticize the Northwest– “they think we have a lot of snow”–and yearn to visit. One student said that her friends in the East think of her home in the Northwest as “kind of a mecca which they dream of visiting.” But another Easterner described this “mecca” slightly derisively as “that place where expatriates who don’t want to leave the country go.” Along with their romantic notions of the Northwest, Easterners perceive this region as more liberal. When students used that term interchangably with tolerance and openness, I realized they were talking about more than politics: “Here, you can believe whatever you want, people leave you alone and don’t try to change your opinion.” A Northwest student at Brown said that people in the East, on the other hand, “have more of a need to impose their ideas on a group.” It appears that here in the Northwest we are less rigid in our beliefs and less likely to intrude on other people’s belief systems. In other words, there’s room for everyone and everyone’s opinion. When a student from the East asked the name of this publication and I replied, Open Spaces, he responded: “Ah, that’s typical of the Northwest.” We both knew we were referring to more than the landscape. Not surprisingly, many Northwest students noted a major difference between East and West Coast students in their relation to the outdoors and nature. “There doesn’t seem to be the same grand beauty in the East,” said one, “and people don’t seem to be affected by the landscape, at least not the natural landscape.” He added that in the West we are more aware of our natural surroundings and that in his short time away, he is already more appreciative of Portland and its natural beauty. “People in the East have a different sense of what could or should be around you,” according to another Northwest student. She added that City kids are much more impressed with the beauty of her college campus which to her seemed manicured and artificial. She was also surprised that an advertised school outing club hike was merely a mile walk in a park; she had visions of the Columbia Gorge. Similarly, another Northwest student talked about putting on her hiking boots only to walk along a concrete trail with her schoolmates. She summed it up with, “they have a different definition of natural and mountain.” It may confirm these students’ observations about East Coast people’s lack of connection to the outdoors that not one of the Reed students I spoke to from the East even mentioned it. In the East the outdoors seems to be more for getting from one place to another than for being in. The weather is more severe (“It even snowed on Mother’s Day,” lamented a student at Williams) and open space more scarce. In the West, however, “the weather doesn’t intrude into life so much, there is more open space and more variation within it – higher mountains, bigger waves, more beaches, rain forests, deserts.” This combination is more apt to draw you into the outdoors, which may be why one student observed that there is more nightlife in the East. In the West, people go outside, in the East, people go “out.” Given the proliferation of L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer and REI catalogues, you may be under the impression that the outdoor look which is commonplace in the Northwest has gained universal popularity. However, you have been deceived. Fleeces, especially as one gets closer to urban centers, are definitely not “in.” In fact, Northwesterners going Back East for an extended period of time should not go with a complete wardrobe, but instead should plan to do some shopping there. Students all had a lot to say about differing styles on the two Coasts. One said that he recognizes other Northwest kids on his East Coast campus by their dress as well as their demeanor – “they look looser, more laid back, and they wear white crew socks.” Another said that East Coast kids look at Northwest dress as backwards. He feels a bit like a hick in his flannel shirts and hiking boots and was mildly amused when one evening on campus another student passed by, acknowledging him with a “howdy.” Although some students felt that kids in the East dress less for the weather – “when it snows they expect the paths to be shoveled” – donning neither boots nor jackets with hoods, when it rains there is a sea of umbrellas. A student at the very urban NYU commented that while styles in the Northwest seem to be pretty casual, students in the East seem to be “more dressed.” He said he’s enjoyed watching as students come to New York with their regional styles and then as the year progresses slowly change until “finally they’re all in black.” A student from the East felt that people in the Northwest don’t dress as nicely; another said people are more style conscious in the East, that they seem to care more about how they will be perceived by how they look. “You see more alternative styles here,” she said, “and students seem to have an attitude of “‘I don’t care what they think.’” The more conservative dress in the East is just one manifestation of what some see as a more conservative, traditional and even “stiffer” lifestyle there. An East coast student at the University of Oregon thinks that more is expected of young people in the East: proper language, manners and dress; respect for adults; following societal norms; and “not making headlines.” She said she hears more slang here and sees more group identity through alternative dress styles. The types of differences that she noted reflect some very basic differences between these two regions – East and West. Whereas students from the East tend to describe home as older, more stable, more settled, and stagnant, they describe the West as looser, younger, more open and new. An East coast student from Stanford commented that the people she knows here “are more individualistic and more likely to try something new, even if it means doing it alone. In the East, there is less variation, but you’ll always have company.” Students who choose to cross the country to go to college, leaving family and friends behind, are often more independent and adventurous types. Still, the distance from home can be stressful. “It is hard to understand how far 3,000 miles really is until you make that move,” said one. Another Northwest student added that the East Coast kids who can go home weekends for a little TLC and clean laundry don’t really understand what the kids who are so far from home are going through. Similarly, an East Coast student at Stanford said the hardest adjustment for her in the West was not being able to join her old friends who on weekends either visited at home or at each others’ East Coast college campuses. At the beginning of the school year, students who have crossed the country arrive on campus alone, from nearby airports, loaded down with suitcases and duffle bags. At the same time, their roommates will be arriving, with their parents, in cars, with all their stuff. They will have all the extras to make their side of the room more comfortable. And at the end of the year, during finals week no doubt, those same students far from home will be furiously packing boxes trying to figure out what to do with everything, while again their roommates are picked up and with parents’ help loaded into cars. I spoke with Marilyn Petrequin, a private college counselor in Portland, to find out what she tells her student clients, about two-thirds of whom want to go East, about the cultural differences they can expect to find. Most of her advice fit right in with what students are reporting back, although she said, “beforehand most students don’t believe it.” She cautions students who go East not to “jump ship” too soon because it takes a year to assimilate fully. Petrequin said she sees the college years as a time to experiment and hates to see the adventure stopped by students coming home too soon. That reminded me of the wise comment of a student attending school in New York who said she likens her experience there to traveling. A good perspective to maintain – she is on an extended trip from which she knows she will return. The most interesting part of her job, Petrequin concluded, is finding the right fit for students: “Students who want to go East but say ‘where should I go?’ often end up with a more successful match than those who are more concerned with the name of the school than the place.” Of the Northwest students I spoke to, a few had transferred to other East Coast colleges, but only one had transferred back to the West. And only one student said that in hindsight he’d approach his college search differently and look at schools in California. Originally, he said, he hadn’t considered the impact of the cultural difference. Mostly, students valued their college experiences in the East for what they learned about themselves and about others, or as one student put it, “going to school in the East was extraordinarily good for me.” Northwest parents, you’ll be pleased to hear that most Northwest students said they prefer to move back to this region after college. “Going Back East,” said one, “broadened my outlook on life but didn’t bring about any fundamental changes in how I’d like to live.” Northwest students seem to have a real affection for and appreciation of the surroundings in which they were raised, probably even more so for having gone East. One student spoke about what her friends at Swarthmore call “The Great Pacific Northwest Conversation Killer,” when two people from the Northwest start talking about home. “No one else likes where they’re from,” she said, adding, “you never hear anyone talking about, let’s say, Delaware.” Northwest students realize that here you can have both the natural beauty and access to culture, although admittedly not what the East Coast would consider culture. Except for one who said “the world is run between New York and Washington, D.C.,” students don’t feel they need to be in the East to accomplish their goals after college. When I asked several students from the East if they would stay in the Northwest, there was a split (although most indicated they would be attending graduate school in the East). One student said he preferred the Northwest because there are more opportunities since “not everything’s been done here already.” Another said that while the Northwest may offer long term opportunities for a better quality of life, the East provides better immediate choices for first time job seekers. And finally, one student said that although it isn’t a Northwest issue, she would return home to the East because of family. “When I have children, I’ll be able to celebrate holidays with my parents.” Another happy parent there. The evidence is in. It may not be scientific because of a narrow data base (about 33 subjects took part) or unreported variables. Still, I believe we can rely on the recurring themes of this anecdotal evidence, supplied by experienced students, as valid expressions of some regional differences between East and West. And so, for a variety of reasons, life on the two Coasts is notably different. It is true in obvious external and superficial ways, but more importantly, it appears that within these distinct environments we have a different sense of who, as individuals, we are in the world and in our relation to each other. We express these differences through verbal and non-verbal communication, how we spend our time alone and with others, and yes, even in how we present ourselves to others through dress. Do these differences have a profound effect on college bound students entering the other culture? Not really – they are very astute, but they are also very adaptable. |
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