The New York subway system is a conundrum. It’s the most New York part of New York City, yet found only in the hazy underground underneath the hustle and bustle of the streets.

Everybody in New York takes the subway. It’s a mode of transportation that merges each and every enclave, culture, belief system and socioeconomic background. While riding in the subway myself, I’ve witnessed humanity at many levels. It’s not often that you find millionaires and the homeless sitting side by side in the same society that separates the rich and poor like a staunch liberal avoids a God-fearing conservative.

To me, a young student journalist, subway-goers are each average pedestrians just trying to survive in a concrete jungle where the only consistency is inconsistencies … well, that and capitalism. Some are children, businessmen and women, professors, pizza vendors, ballerinas or public servants. Others are tourists, believers, technical analysts or young journalism students. Everybody is an equal on the metro.

New York, if anything, is a hub for humanity, a place for people to watch people do things in a city that’s doing things all the time. Everybody is a bystander to something, and nobody is as alone as they seem, despite the mere attitude of “I tolerate you” unspoken about the streets.

Everybody is here for a reason, even if that reason wasn’t the same reason why they originally came to New York; eventually, a reason or purpose is made for them.

During my second week in a summer program with the School of the New York Times, our class was introduced to a New York Times metro reporter Annie Correal. At the time, in the middle of July, she was busy reporting on the child reunification crisis from American immigration.

However, this wasn’t the only topic she’d written major headlines on. In August 2017, she wrote a Metropolitan front-page piece called “The Secret Life of a City Banana,” which was about how the banana industry connected to New York ports and its broader implications.

Correal taught me and my peers a couple useful lessons that not only apply to reporting in New York City, but also internationally.

Rule No. 1: Question authority. This could simply mean inquiring with offices of U.S.
consulates or contacting local nonprofits that provide representation for certain groups. Being a reporter means you’re always on top of your s— and you’re always on. A story doesn’t die off because the public loses interest, a story dies off because journalists aren’t doing their jobs.

Rule No. 2: Be curious. Like what 1960s New York Times reporter Gay Talese said to Correal, “When everybody zigs, you zag.” As a journalist, you must always be inquisitive about things, even if it means digging way beneath the surface for the story you want. If you want to find something new, you have to go out into the world and explore.

Rule No. 3: Find that beat within a beat. Beat the system and beat into the heart of an issue. Investigate until your eyes bleed from the pages of research and interviewing you’ve compiled.

Throughout my time in the sleepless city, I visited many boroughs and sites with my summer peers: I reveled at the subway system, devoured soul food in Harlem, shamed gentrification in Brooklyn, walked the High Line during golden hour, took in the works of the Museum of Modern Art, stood proudly next to the “Fearless Girl” statue in the financial district and laughed until I couldn’t breathe in our Upper West Side dorms.

I fell in love with New York and religiously vowed to never return to La La Land, or, as I like call it, the Land of the Walking Dead. Hopefully one day soon I will return to New York to reclaim my new identity as a fledgling native of this sleepless city.

Before coming to New York, I thought journalism was a small passion that would eventually subside as I considered other career options, but I left with the opposite opinion. To those of you about to brave a new obstacle or territory in your life, I say make your time count, make it memorable. Go out and explore as much as you can with your eyes and ears wide open because there’s no time like the present, and there’s certainly no place like the spectacular here and now.

Shouldn’t we all question authority? Is that not our mandate as participants in a democracy? Shouldn’t we all be curious? Shouldn’t we all find that beat within the beat, or, in other words, make the most of our situation by finding little nuggets of wonder?

That’s why we have student journalists, that’s why young people are crucial in this age of “fake news” and “fake science.”

One more thing: there are pigeons everywhere in New York. And those pigeons clearly have their own agenda and sense of purpose. I aspire to be as confident as a New York pigeon some day.