In my two hours of free time each week, I’m inundated with the same entertainment that makes me ask the question, is there any reality to the New York lifestyle?

For someone like myself, New York City is the apex of the journalism world. College grads, fresh off a B.A., flock to the Big Apple with even bigger dreams of inflating their egos and making themselves the envy of their friends. In the process, a majority will find a multitude of reasons why doing anything productive is not a part of the equation.

It’s tough to blame them; the city is a seductress. She’ll send enough distractions at you to keep you tied up for the rest of your life, but is the high cost of living really worth it?

This column doesn’t take into account native New Yorkers who can chill with their parents, rent-free, on the Upper East Side. Those individuals have an opportunity to save money, a concept that is nearly foreign to most New Yorkers.

With the high cost of rent and living expenses, it’s no wonder half the city is up to its eyeballs in debt.

This year, I made a conscious choice to skip the Big Apple in favor of journalism school. It’s not cheap, and a multitude of self-congratulating potential journalists shun it like the Plague. But what looks better–Candidate A, who followed through and got an M.A., or candidate B, the hipster who sat on the couch and ate falafel for two years? You make the call.

Unfortunately, many get too caught up in the “magic” of the city to even consider doing anything other than bar-hop, stroll the Village and compare fashionable thrift-store clothing with the art student down the hall. While this may be fun for a weekend, I don’t see this as the best way to start a career.

The media plays a big role in drawing the susceptible college student to NYC. HBO’s “Sex and the City” evolved from the story of four single ladies to that of a NYC tourism board commercial.

Really, if I hear Sarah Jessica Parker say one more time how “glorious” New York is and how the city may be the only place in the world where you can get a hamburger at 1 a.m., then I’ll quit watching just as quickly as I did with “The Anna Nicole Smith Show.”

What’s worse is a show like “Friends.” Is it really believable that some mildly successful pals who rarely work live in a 2200 square-foot apartment and spend most of their day sipping espresso? On “Seinfeld,” Jerry didn’t pretend to work because he was a comedian, and the rest of the crew was constantly at work, except for the perpetually unemployed Kramer.

Watching “Sex and the City” and “Friends” give the wannabe a great sense of hope that somewhere out there is a fictional, fabricated reality. It doesn’t exist.
Going to New York without a solid job is like handing over your ATM card to a guy on the street. After three months of an unpaid internship in the Big Apple, I felt like my bank account had gone through dialysis.

NYC is a place where dues must be paid before money is handed out. It’s an anomaly in the real world. The ridiculous cost of living is difficult to deal with for the overworked, underpaid grad. Is eight dollars for a six pack of Budweiser supposed to be a joke? Time to downgrade tastes to Schlitz and Oscar Meyer.

And the living conditions–oh, the living conditions. The rent-controlled, 1,500 square-foot, cathedral-ceiling, French-door abodes that grace your TV set are an illusion. You want to know what you’ll get for a couple grand a month? Cramped quarters that look like a run-down apartment on the East Side of Madison.

Do you like roommates? Well you’re going to need a lot of them to make that meager income go a long way. I spent my summer working with a girl who was making less than 20 grand a year to work 45 hours a week and live with five other girls in a two-bedroom apartment.

If you want reality, that’s reality, Carrie Bradshaw. I asked this co-worker why she did it, and her only reply was, “Because I love New York.” That’s devotion.

The music industry is equally to blame for selling a non-existent reality. The Strokes and a variety of other pasty “it” bands are constantly pictured in Rolling Stone partying in NYC every night. Hipsters revel in this image. A diet of nicotine and alcohol may be appealing to some, but there’s nothing ritzy about their inevitable side effects.

I’m not shunning NYC, because it’s a great city for successful people. I’ll go if it’s the right situation and the right time, but I learned my lesson. I don’t need a city to define who I am.