Living in the city these past few years has really made me notice my preference for the suburban lifestyle. I don’t hate the city life, far from it actually. At first, I couldn’t stand it at all, but as with prolonged exposure to most things, it’s possible to adapt over time. However, every few weeks I make the trip back home to the suburban life for the weekend, and these trips have led me to realize that there are some things about city life that rub me the wrong way.
The most inescapable thing that I don’t like about the city, is the abhorrent amounts of trash. In the suburbs, the trash gets stored away nice and neat in the trash cans that every house has, and the trash in these cans are picked up by trash trucks on certain days of the week. Unfortunately, in the city, everywhere is practically fair game when it comes to disposing of trash. It’s something that you more than likely won’t even bat an eye at if you’re accustomed to living in the city, but if you’ve lived in the suburbs all your life then you won’t be able to ignore this easily. Not only is it a visual disturbance, but the smell of it is also just as bad, if not worse.
Noise is another big problem that I have with city life. Whenever I go to my home in the suburbs it’s peaceful and quiet almost all the time. It doesn’t matter what day of the week it is, nor does the time of day matter, it’s always quiet. In contrast to this, the city literally never sleeps. It’s even worse on weekend nights when the parties are in full swing. This is obviously amplified because I live on a college campus, but it really makes me miss home when I try to turn in early on a weekend night but can’t actually go to bed because of the music blasting from the room down the hall.
Despite some of these considerably unavoidable problems that city life suffers from, it would be unfair of me to give the impression that it’s all bad and that I can’t stand living in Philadelphia. There are a lot of aspects about city life that I do prefer to the suburban counterpart. Being someone who loves food and eats at very odd hours, like at 2 a.m. while I’m working on a homework assignment, it’s very convenient to be able to get food at just about any hour. When I get hungry at two in the morning when I’m at home, I have to rely on what’s in the fridge.
I do also really enjoy having everything within walking distance of my apartment. Driving to places while I’m at home isn’t much of an issue because the roads are generally not all that busy when I go to places, but it’s just nicer to be able to walk. Anyone who has driven knows the stress that comes with it, and it can be a very unpleasant experience, especially if you’re driving in heavy traffic. Being able to walk to places just makes life easier and one doesn’t have to worry about paying for gas or getting into an accident.
At this point, I think I will always prefer the suburban lifestyle because I grew up living in it. But, I can say that going to Drexel has made me comfortable with city life, while also opening me up to a lot of the pros that come with it. As college students, I think it is rather important for us to pay attention to what we actually think of city life compared to other lifestyles because this is a good time for us to judge if the city life is for us or not. It’s very easy to get caught up in the workload that college gives us, but taking a step back from it all and looking at how much we like or dislike our current lifestyle can potentially help us gain a clearer picture of what we want our futures to be.