Being from the Detroit metro area, I have felt a very particular transition moving from Macomb à  Ann Arbor à Detroit. To people in Ann Arbor, I shot for sky and landed in the dirt (as opposed to shooting for the stars and landing on the moon). That isn’t to say that people at U of M are snooty or ill willed, they just are ignorant. Detroit is a well-kept secret, so well kept in fact that they have no idea it’s worth visiting.

When it comes to the eyes of my friend/acquaintances in Macomb, Detroit is the biggest city around, and by extension it is (cue Billy Madison voice) ‘the coolest’. Heading down here for opening day, sporting events, st paddy’s, sports, sports, and sports is the pinnacle of fun in southeast Michigan. And because they’re all ‘Detroiters’, they know because they’re from here of course!

In either case it becomes difficult to discuss my feelings and excitement I feel towards the city. Feelings, because one cannot possibly empathize with a Detroit transplant unless they are one, we don’t understand the way life-long Detroiters do, but we internalize frustrations the way that a daily life within them has to. Excitement because having changes happen IN your community, as opposed to your weekend hot spot spark a joy that temporary experience can’t capture.

None of this is meant to be a suggestion that a solution to these problems is easy or exists, but just to unveil the fact that the only way to learn from one another is with candid discussion, and to understand that we will never fully understand, and that is OK.