Straight-A student turned her head away from grading scale and restarted her dream in New York, thriving while struggling.

It was the very first time I saw Li since my college graduation four months ago. She was standing inside the 8 St-NYU subway station, wearing a grey BIG 10 school letter hoodie and a white baseball cap, blending into the crowd and looking nothing different from a real New Yorker. When we got closer, I saw water stains on her hoodie. She said she left her umbrella in her office.

On our way to meet at the midpoint, she texted me that there was a person, who was acting weird and smelled extremely unpleasant, standing terribly close to her in the subway car. “[The smell] was like a mixture of rotten cheese and sweat from ten weeks ago,” Li said. She was worried that the smell had gotten into her a little bit because she could still smell it. I thought it was just the subway station.

Li, 22, moved to New York City a few weeks ago, working as an entry-level marketing specialist, after graduating with honors from a top 20 university, with a degree in sociology.

“Every FOB New Yorker has their starter pack: one, the gut to give up everything you used to own; second, the faith in yourself that you will stay,” Li said, and she has both.

She left everything she established in her college town and moved to New York to start everything from scratch, holding a one-year OPT as a newly graduated international student – which means she only has one shot to wrestle between “going big or going home.”

Believing her to be a skilled brainiac, I did not exactly expect her to become an entry-level marketer. When I asked if she was satisfied with her current job, she took a deep breath, “At first? Of course not. But if you only got one shot, what would you do? After a whole summer of applying, I finally realized how competitive today’s job market is, and being an international student only makes it worse. This is the only job offer I have in the hundreds of applications I sent out. There’s a chance for them to sponsor my work visa based on my merit, and being good is where I shine, right?” She is also hoping to climb the ranks step by step and be promoted to marketing manager.

Part of Li’s job is ground marketing in neighborhoods in New York. Rather than feeling embarrassed by standing at tables and pushing sales, she felt the physical work of lifting and carrying free merch and samples was more challenging. “Some of my co-workers would still be nervous about being recognized by their acquaintances, but I feel OK, I even stuff more free samples to my friends if they ever run into me,” Li laughed a little, and then shared a free membership code and dozens of coupons with me.

Before this job, she already spent time selling her calligraphy works at the public market in her school’s town. “I don’t feel like there’s anything I should be embarrassed about. It is even hard for me to paint my job a bitter picture. In New York, many people are working on something way harder than this,” she added.

During the day, we went to Chinatown in the lower part of Manhattan. She made a whole list of restaurants and eatery stops she wanted to go to. Every bite tasted like home: pork over rice, char siu, and leavened dough baozi. Li has been craving these for a long time. For many days after work, the only thing she had time and energy to make at home was a cup of instant noodles, from a big box of a variety of instant food left in the pantry by the girl who sublet the apartment to her.

She showed me her room in Long Island City – a living room separated by a flex wall in a one-bedroom apartment with another girl occupying the bedroom. Their kitchen and bathroom are the only communal space, but every drawer and shelf unit is stuffed with groceries and sundries that don't belong to her. She pays more than $1,800 a month for this room, and there won’t be much left on her paycheck after paying her rent.

Is everything worth it? “I spent a lot of time with my parents on the phone because I was stressed, telling them my salary could barely cover my life here. It’s true – the transition from a small college town to New York City, from school to work, and from ambition to reality, is really hard,” said Li.

“But when they asked if I wanted to go back home to China or go to another top school for a master’s degree, I said no without a single second of hesitation. If I had chosen the safe, well-established path, I might have gotten what everyone wants, but I would always remember that I had a chance to stay in New York but I gave it up.”

Maybe it was New York, or maybe it was her own college experience, whichever it was, changed Li from head to toe. In the years we have known each other, I was there to witness the many decisions she made, and the great things she done. She has a perfect transcript, worked as a sociology research assistant, was a transfer student ambassador, played the heroine in a student film, ran her personal social account, and even reached her first 10k likes milestone. Together we ran her startup brand Lexi Ink, which sold Chinese calligraphy creative products and earned $800 in revenue last summer.

I thought someone talented like her would go for a universally recognized path to success, like those excellent top students you see on those LinkedIn posts. They have certainly fluctuated Li’s mind, for a while.

“My college was like a jungle, where everyone seemed to have already found their niche surviving from it. Everyone was working towards something, whether it was research, internships, startups, or neither but they are onward to the standardized path of ‘success’. Everyone but me,” Li continued, “These considerable, quantifiable achievements and even the stability of the ecosystem have certainly once affected me and my self-awareness.”

Being a new grad myself, I also went through something similar with Li, and questioned the meaning of the education we received if the outcome never reached our expectations. “Many people received the same education, but they are definitely turning into different kinds of people – some of them will be textbook successful, but that doesn’t mean they learned everything; some might even be a so-called ‘loser’, and that also doesn’t mean they have learned nothing,” Li picked up a slice of cha siu with her chopsticks. It often takes half a day to make authentic Cantonese-style cha siu, from marinating to grilling.

Life should never be a fast food production line that rushes everything to a standardized product, and tells them they are right here where they are supposed to be. “Compared to the long span of life, I am probably just in the soil preparation stage right now and waiting to bud. As long as I am pursuing what I want, then I haven’t wasted a single second of my life. Not limiting my life choices was my greatest achievement so far,” Li swallowed down that piece of cha siu with satisfaction.

New York is like a dynamically functional and metabolizing organ. Every street is a blood vein and people are the blood cells that keep it running, rushing like rivers that never cease; every day there will always be old ones being flushed out and new ones coming in. For Li, the city is a field for her to run, with tremendous possibilities.

“This might sound like a cliche, but New York is ‘the center of the universe’. It might not be the most joyful place to live. She might slap you in your face when you ask her for anything. But it for sure comes with countless opportunities,” Li said, “And that’s why I wanted to stay, or fight for staying here at least for once. So I didn’t say no to stepping into this river. I did everything I should have done. I'm going to have fun.”

Li and I parted at the 34th St subway station, where I was going on the train back to Jersey. She stayed on the subway to meet with her friend in uptown. I saw the subway train take her away, and she blended into the crowd just like the way I saw her in the morning. The city machine never stops running, and neither does Li. It was my pleasure to be a part of her life, and I will keep revisiting it once in a while, hungry for more.

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*Li wishes to not disclose her full name and other details due to her company's employee nondisclosure agreement and to protect her privacy.