Greener on the other side - a Donegal graduate’s transition to life in the Big Apple

Getting to grips with the gritty streets as one of the new Irish immigrants

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The 7 Subway train in Queen's New York

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I’m a girl who loves her space. I like having my own bedroom, my own quiet time to play guitar where no one can hear me, to walk down a street without having to swim through a sea of people, and regular doses of scenic mountains. So, why oh why, you might ask, would I voluntarily come to a place where nearly twice the entire population of Ireland could fit, where I share a bedroom and live in an apartment you couldn’t swing a cat in.

I spent five years of my life in the academic bubble and stepped out into the real world to the bang of a recession in full swing. It seemed like every Tom, Dick and Harry had a degree or a masters and every one of them was in the same boat as I was: unemployed.

When you leave university, you expect some kind of opportunity to be out there for you but a previously booming economy had made sure that by the time the recession hit, I might as well have collected five crisp packets to become a graduate rather than slog through five years of study. It seemed that Ireland was bursting at the seams with educated people with no place to go.

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Motivated by my own restlessness and the encouragement of friends and family, I jumped on the band wagon to New York at the last minute with three girls I’d known from university. It did seem like there wasn’t much choice in the matter due to the dead end that Ireland had become but, in the end, it was the temptation of life experience that made my decision for me.

We arrived in the night with our lives packed into suitcases that had eaten one too many pairs of jeans and made our way through crazy traffic and bright lights to Brooklyn, where we would stay for the next four nights. There seemed to be so much to do in the beginning and, due to visa restrictions, we only had 90 days to do it all. It’s a bit of a catch-22 but it seems you can’t get an apartment without a social security number, yet you can’t get a social security number without an address. Thank God for an accommodating broker willing to take a chance on us. After spending four nights with my three friends in a small room in Brooklyn and one night in a hostel, two doors down from a trumpet player who sounded like he was announcing royalty every five seconds, we were relieved to get our own place, though it wasn’t easy.

In Ireland, I’d never been asked for so much as a reference when moving house, whereas over here, we needed recent payslips, a good credit rating and references, whilst also discovering the joys of broker fees.

Having an apartment, no matter how tiny and unfurnished, felt like hitting the jackpot and we proceeded to make it our own with the cheapest that Kmart had to offer (the saucepans rusted through in three weeks and the first blow-up mattress went flat within two).

Being in New York on a strict budget can be pretty depressing when there’s three million things to do and no money to do them. When having a cup of tea in a café feels like splurging, you know it’s going to be a while before you see your first Broadway show. You need iron will power or an unlimited bank account to walk these streets.

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