Stereotypes, assumptions lead to missed opportunities

All throughout May, when asked about my summer plans, my answer would surprise classmates and friends.

The usual conversation:

"What are you doing this summer?"

"I have an internship in Kansas City."

"…Wait, where? Why?"

Then, the following questions: Is there anything in Kansas besides fields and tornadoes? Will you be working with Dorothy? Does Kansas City have, like, buildings? Is it an actual city?

Yes, no, yes and yes.

A geography lesson: there are two Kansas Cities, located 15 minutes apart — one in Kansas and one in Missouri. Kansas City, Mo. is a larger metropolis than its sister in Kansas, and it is the town in which my internship was located.

My dad and stepmom live in a suburb of the Missouri city just across the border in Kansas. I've visited them once before, six or seven years ago. I decided to take an internship in Kansas City because the summer before my senior year was the last chance I would have to spend some time with my dad, who is a pilot and divorced my mom 11 years ago. So, due to job and geography, it's been more of a phone-based relationship than anything else.

I have to admit, as a 10-year-old I was oblivious to my dad's new home. Why was my dad moving to Kansas, of all places? The reason, I found out, was because my stepmom grew up there and, as an adult, came back to settle down.

Now, even upon returning for a whole summer, I was still unfamiliar with the city in which I'd live and wondered what the people I'd work with would really be like. Would they have accents? Would they be… ignorant? Some of my fellow employees were from Western Kansas, another was from Oklahoma. Sure, they had accents, but ignorant they were not. Every person I met at the nonprofit organization where I worked, as well as every other person I interacted with in Kansas City, was intelligent and classy.

I quickly found that Kansas City is one of the cleanest, greenest, friendliest, most professional, most metropolitan areas I've ever visited. The suburbs are beautiful, complete with fountains and large homes. The shopping is high-end—my favorite find is The Plaza, an outdoor shopping center designed to look like a Spanish city. The nightlife is a blast, whether it's checking out the Jazz District or hanging out at a bar in one of the Power and Light District's eight blocks of entertainment. And there are so many restaurants of different cuisines, from white-tablecloth Italian to the best barbecue I've ever tasted (Hello, KC Masterpiece stands for Kansas City!) to menus filled with varieties of gourmet tapas.

Kansas City was, to me, an oasis in the Midwest.

In preparing for my summer, I didn't know what it'd be like to live in a city where I knew not a soul other than my parents; however, I didn't expect to leave Kansas City so enriched by all its culture.

Still, after returning from my internship, I found that my friends' assumptions of my summer whereabouts didn't change.

Last night at a party: "How was Nebraska?"

"…Actually, I was in Kansas City. And yes, it is much more than just fields."

But it turns out this ignorance is not just the result of an East Coast perception. One individual I met in Kansas City couldn't even distinguish Delaware from New Hampshire when I told him where I went to school.

I find it interesting that people in different parts of the country can be so oblivious of one another's geography. Luckily for our generation, the world is at our fingertips, even if only technologically—we should take advantage of resources like Google or Wikipedia to familiarize ourselves with unfamiliar places before casting judgments about their people or qualities.

There is a lot to say about assumptions. Sure, you can take the old "It makes an a** out of you and me" route, but I'd like to think it goes deeper than that. Assumptions, when negative, lead to close-mindedness, which ultimately leads to missed opportunities.