If you’ve been reading my recent articles, you know that I’ve been thinking about life after Vassar. That’s a little intimidating, considering that my most successful career experience to date has involved making pizza for guests who think that their slices can’t taste good without a gallon of ranch poured on top—but hey, the restaurant industry is always growing, right? I’ll find a job one day, but before then, I’ll have to decide where I want to live, as will you. Let’s face this challenge together: Here’s my Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Dream Location!
Your first option is your best, and also your cheapest: good old Poughkeepsie, NY. If you’ve walked the aisles of Stop & Shop at 3 a.m. and thought, “I can see myself spending the rest of my life here”, then I have some good news for you—you absolutely can! Poughkeepsie is the hottest spot in the country for the movers and shakers behind Kennedy Fried Chicken, the dueling Rite Aids and the downtown Dunkin’, which also happens to be the only consistently crowded business in the area on weekdays. And the city also boasts the best job market for new grads anywhere in the south-central Hudson Valley!
Want to go somewhere a little less … Poughkeepsie? I hear you! If you go on Handshake, you’ll quickly find a wide variety of job listings from companies in locations like Madison, WI; Raleigh, NC; and Nashville, TN—collectively known among job seekers as Non-Obvious Places of Employment (or NOPEs for short). Sure, these cities may be located in politically conservative areas of the country with a well-known hostility to Vassar traditions like smoking weed in public and wearing black nail polish, but they more than make up for it with their low minimum wages, poor labor laws and proliferation of used-car dealerships! And the rent is cheap, too.
Here’s a curveball: You could go over to the dark side. By that, I mean…and you might need to take a minute here, breathe in and prepare yourself … a job in STEM. West Coast powerhouses like San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Cosmopolis are always recruiting tech talent, and learning to code is as easy as buying a “For Dummies” book and spending the next ten hours sweating over a filthy keyboard. What’s more, rents in these places are even cheaper than in the Financial District down in NYC, often by as much as five percent! When you look at it that way, you’d have to be a snot-breathed moron NOT to take the plunge.
Feeling exotic? Why not move somewhere out of the country? Places like London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Shanghai offer all the same opportunities as a large American city, plus the fantastic benefits of navigating a language barrier and feeling extreme cultural cringe whenever American politicians appear on TV news! Also, if you do go abroad, you’ll enjoy higher odds than ever before of appearing on “House Hunters International.” When you put it that way, esta oportunidad se parece bastante いいね？
Or, I mean, you COULD move to New York City, you utterly shameless smooth-brained little lemming, you. The Big Apple offers everything new grads could ever want: jobs, cultural experiences, cool people, mysteriously stinky puddles … the list goes on. Plus, enjoy the added bonus of being able to live as little as an hour and a half away from your place of employment, which will be located in Midtown—coincidentally, the only place in the city without decent, affordable lunch! On the weekends, relax in your shoebox of an apartment with your eleven roommates. Sure, it’ll be a little cozy, but think of it this way: You’ll have a full group for Mario Kart absolutely whenever you want!
So there you have it: All of the enticing places to live that await you after Vassar! I know, I know—the list looks a little intimidating, right? Being spoiled for choice can be really hard! But if you’re feeling stressed, just take a deep breath, pull out a coin and flip until you get a definite answer about which one you should pick. Giving Lady Luck a hand in things is always a great idea—and hey, maybe you’ve secretly always wanted to live in Tuscaloosa!