The Midwest: Where An Idea Can Just Be An Idea
March 22, 2024
Writer: Emily Becker
Editor: Lily Miro
I often annoy my friends about the “quarrels” I have with the Midwest: people walk too slow, no one knows what I mean when I order a “regular” slice of pizza, there’s no ocean, silly things like that. Michigan is different from New York in so many ways, but the one thing that has had the largest effect on me is that those who grew up here weren’t faced with the same expectation of independence that I had at a young age.
In high school, if I had an idea for an event or project, it would become “my idea.” I was expected to take on the project entirely, figure out all the logistics: date, time, place, etc., and present it back to the group once it was completely worked out. That was the expectation. I often struggled with finding new ideas because I was always forced to see one all the way to the end. Ideas could never just be ideas, starting points, or kernels of a larger thought; they had to be completely fact-checked plans. If you couldn’t do it on your own, it felt like the idea didn’t deserve to happen. So, the few times I asked for help, I was flooded with guilt and failure because I felt I didn’t “succeed”. So, although knowing how to be independent could be helpful, there were plenty of other times when it was necessary to ask for help–like when I developed a wrist injury from the piano–where this forced independence stunted any of that ability.
In my first week working at my job in Michigan, I was shocked to see the difference in mindset play out in this environment. My bosses’ first task for me was to make a spreadsheet of planned events for the year. I brought it back with all the logistics figured out; that’s what I thought I was expected to do. They were astonished, as all they meant by “plan it” was to come up with a monthly theme. At that meeting, we all talked through these ideas, thinking about what we would add and who would be dedicated to each part. This was the first time I had seen “my idea” be worked on by others around me, showing me how collaboration allowed these thoughts to reach their full potential. My voice lessons work the same way. My teacher asks about the projects I’m working on and helps guide me in places where I’m feeling stuck. She often points me in the direction of others as well, and by the end of the lesson, I’ve written about three emails for more assistance. At first, I thought this feeling was just a University of Michigan thing. But, I realize it’s the people here who have just grown up with a completely different mentality than I have.
New York helped me set up the framework to be independent, to get to a second level of thinking on my own, but it also caused unnecessary stress from imaginary standards set upon a teenager. The potential of my ideas often got weighed down by the stress and anxiety that surrounded completing them on my own. The guilt and failure I felt asking for help made it hard to feel like there was any room to learn, grow, and fail, a necessity in your young adult years. At this time in my life, being in a place that emphasizes asking for help and working through ideas together shows me that anything I aspire to do is within reach. In Michigan, endpoints don’t feel a million miles away. Rather, they feel like attainable goals that continue to grow through the people around me. Most importantly, I’ve learned that my ideas are enough as they are: they don’t have to be fully planned out projects that took me hours to finish ‐ they can just be ideas.
