I will never forget a conversation I had within the first week of moving to NYC. I was sitting on a bed in Brooklyn with my friend from South Carolina who had been living in NYC for the past 4 years attending Pratt. I remember feeling a knot in my stomach when she fair warned me (after I told her I didn't know who Ariel Pink or Woody Allen was) that if I wasn't knowledgeable on the music industry, fashion, and film that I wouldn't last here in the city for too long. Immediately I knew this would be a problem for me because movies and music never fully took my interest. I was always imbedded in creating new things from my own head, living in a dream world that revolved around astrology, emotions, human beings, and my own aspirations and philosophies. I never cared for movies (I have a terrible fear of movie theaters and a lack of attention span) and the only music that interested me were the ones with poetic lyrics that I found compelling or relatable to. I have noticed a large array of people that find the instrumental qualities of music admirable but being a writer, I have always found the real beauty in the lyrical aspect. This quirk about myself has made me extremely picky in my selection of music and has made me feel less inclined to expand what I listen to. Most of the music that I listen to now was shown to me by my friends or past lovers. I would start to admire the songs with a hierarchy over others because of the nostalgia that it provided in regards to who I listened to the songs with and what the person meant to me at that time. When coming to New York, my playlist consisted of the same things I listened to since my freshman year of high school (timeless things of course and still very tasteful in my opinion)- however, upon moving here, I was basically forced to broaden my musical horizons  in order to converse with others and not seem like a provincial hick (people are pretty pretentious in NYC just so y'all know). In the beginning of my New York college experience, either during midnight smoke sessions or shindigs through out Brooklyn, I sat quietly while all of the New York natives fought over who was going to decide what was played from their iTunes next while King Krule, Devendra Banhart, and Of Montreal blasted from the stereos. Feeling alienated by my lack of knowledge on the more obscure (very far from mainstream bands), I listened and began to enjoy the vast musical sounds I was being exposed to little by little. Thankfully while seeking refuge in this ostracization due to my lack of media depth, I was lucky to have chosen a roommate whose iTunes currently reaches the thousands making her (in my eyes) a musical guru. After hearing a variety of different styles and artists, not only was I appreciating the poetics of these songs like I did previous, but also thanks to my new friends that were all musically inclined and extremely talented on various instruments, I quickly learned to appreciate the instrumental aspects of music as well. I am pretty proud to say that thanks to my roommate, my cultured friends, and the force of NYC, I am slowly, BUT SURELY becoming a more well rounded modern day teenager in terms of appreciating and keeping up with the media and music. With that being said its safe to announce that my iTunes has expanded and I am no longer listening to Circa Survive, Bright Eyes, and Alanis Morrissette on replay 24/7. (But don't get too excited, I still and will always listen to them and they will forever remain my favorites).