Rockin' the Suburbs

Life in the suburbs was everything I knew before I came to the U. I was born and raised in Bloomington, MN. I lived on the west side. West Bloomington is similar to a lot of the suburbs on television, like The Wonder Years. Kids in West Bloomington have two loving parents with three cats or dogs, and four television sets in their homes. They go to a nationally ranked Blue Ribbon high school and take AP classes and get good grades in them. They get in trouble, but only small amounts of trouble that blow over after a week or two. They’re involved in several extracurricular activities. They graduate high school and go on to a Minnesota college. The largest majority of kids from my high school come to the University of Minnesota.

Here I am, at the University of Minnesota, living the grand narrative of West Bloomington life.

I’ve never had any true adversity to face in my life, save for the minor fact of being a misunderstood Jew in a sea of Protestants. Even at that, I never felt truly alienated or disenfranchised. I was just a regular kid from a regular school and a regular family in the suburbs. This is obviously a generalization of suburban life, some kids had issues at my school, people did drugs, some people didn’t graduate, but all in all, there is an overarching trend that kids from my town get their lives together and are successful someday. Kids who don’t go to college after high school are rare in West Bloomington. I see over 50 of my former classmates around campus on a regular basis. Sometimes it reminds me of how formulaic my life thus far has been.

So far, I’ve chosen to follow the grand narrative set out for me. It’s a part of who I am. I think that part of the reason that so many people from my high school go to the University of Minnesota is because it’s an awesome school that is in a reasonable price range for the upper middle class. Maybe the reason that this is the grand narrative of my area is that it works out well for them. The students that come out of Jefferson High School, who then go to the University of Minnesota, generally go on to getting decent midlevel jobs at Minnesota companies. They get married and have families and generally chose to live in one of the suburbs of Minneapolis. Generally, they seem happy. They get to live close to where they grew up, where their families are, where their history is. Generally, I can say that this grand narrative is something that I look forward to maybe one day fulfilling. Honestly, there are much worse places I could end up.