As a “GA Girl” who, like many others of our brand, decided to move to The Big City after plenty of upper-level education, I make this observation with the help of the French: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
I expected Manhattan to be a tried and true path towards mixing things up a little. After moving steadily away from Greenwich with college in DC and grad school in England (I was a little over zealous on the ‘away’ factor there), I had a sense that my move to The City would be the next logical step in my migration onwards and upwards. While Greenwich Academy and the tight-knit community of Greenwich laid an unbeatable foundation, I was ready the day of graduation to see what the rest of the world had to offer. Since New York City, by many standards, is comprised of the rest of the world, I felt there could be no better place.
But, alas, my Manhattan experience to date has been by no one’s estimate a radical dose of the new. As it turns out, Greenwich Academy follows you wherever you go.
Now some of this is a product of personal circumstances. I work very close by to Grand Central, which means that on any given day, I see former teachers, parents of classmates, or classmates themselves either galloping through the lobby of my building or rushing past the station’s famous clock to catch a train. But when I venture out of my Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood into Murray Hill for a dinner or trip to the bars, it is inevitable that either GA girls or Brunswick boys will be chatting away with each other at a neighboring table or hovering in front of the flat screen TV. If I get on the 6 Train to head to the Upper East Side, the chances are good that there will be a recognizable face.
In a word, it appears that the movement of newly professional Greenwich Academy-ites to Manhattan represents the recreation of the social patterns, cliques and classes of yore, transplanted thirty miles down the road. In one way, this is all very comforting. But in another, I can’t help but ask… Should I move to Queens?
