We can learn like trees how to bend

Things that I have learned during my first nine months in Boston:

 - How to spell Massachusetts.

 - That Massachusetts is a commonwealth. Referring to it as a "state" will, without particularly legitimate reason or warning, generate disdain from certain MASSdwellers. Thirty seconds of internet research informs me that, "Constitutionally speaking," states and commonwealths are identical; only four states (MA, KY, PA, and VA) consider themselves commonwealths, a designation that was historically borne out of a desire to distinguish territories that are "governed by the people" from those overseen by "some king or tyrant" -- like, presumably, those dirty, limey states. You have been warned.

 - That I belong in my grad program; at least to the extent that my professors and the members of my cohort do not seem to suspect (as I sometimes do) that my presence in the program is the product of some hilarious clerical mix-up.

 - That I don't know how to walk down steep hills without feeling like an awkward, lumbering marionette. The jury is still out on whether everyone feels this way, or whether my Midwestern upbringing handicapped me such that I will forever be inhibited from executing this task gracefully.

 - That hummus is cheaper in Boston. I don't know why.

 - That I thrive on solitude. This is more specifically something that I've always suspected of myself but for which I lacked empirical evidence. If absorbed in a project, I'm not bothered by the prospect (or the reality) of spending days on end with minimal face-to-face social contact. I realize that other people are prone to finding this trait alarming and/or a warning sign for some kind of personality disorder, but I figure that in time, my general lack of social ineptitude or murdering sprees will show the haters what's what.

 - That on a day-to-day basis, I eat no more or less seafood on the East Coast than I did living in the Midwest.

 - That learning in detail about the lives of famous writers -- such as Virginia Woolf, who over the course of her life published nine novels, four short story collections, two biographies, a play, and over 500 literary articles and essays, and in her free time read most canonical English literary and critical works, kept a diary, and maintained a surprisingly scandalous social life -- makes me sit and wonder what I'm really doing with my time.

 - That when you're an able-bodied young person and public transportation is adequate, it's very easy to exist without a car. Large, durable, reusable canvas bags are the key to less-laborious grocery shopping.

 - To feel comfortable walking on/over T tracks. This adjustment, while necessary in Boston, has made me (by my own calculations) 25% more likely to someday become one of those people in Chicago who stupidly trespass on the L tracks and thus hold up an entire line while they humiliatingly wait for assistance, lest they electrocute themselves during their attempt to make it to the other side.

 - That I will never, ever find a Cubs game on TV here. 

Boston is good people. Provided the 2012 Mayan apocalypse fails to come to pass despite the sheer force of nutjob willpower, I greatly look forward to the next four to five years.