New Yorkers have a reputation for coming across as rude when in reality people often misunderstand its anxiety and that a great deal of our days are simply out of our control due to a variable number of reasons. I like mid westerners I’m engaged to someone from MI. But I had a different experience when visiting the midwest sure outright strangers, waitresses, Walmart workers, displayed an image of and I emphasize “Politeness” that I too was a little taken aback by. Is polite the same as genuine niceness? According to my friends that grew up in the midwest and south it is absolutely not, it is more often a sort of insult or even just them being nosey and speculative of some newcomer in their area. I am not generalizing and saying all of the midwest I mean the people I encountered were so extremely sure I was judging everything about the midwest and the people from the midwest they ironically didn’t factor into consideration they were in fact judging me by assuming I was thinking all those things merely because I grew up in NYC. I was not I had always idealized small town America frankly I hadn’t visited a lot of it. And my favorite people have always been people from different states. So it was a little disheartening to me. My sister lives in the suburbs of Detroit and I found that being an immigrant and an American citizen and what you would call a 3rd culture kid might have a lot to do with my feelings of awkwardness while there. But what I do know is I went into every situation with no preconceptions of anyone but was met with many assumptions by other people due to their own insecurites. Which I found sad and unfair. But I still think there are parts of the midwest I would enjoy visiting and have no negative feelings towards such a large population in general.