“Where are you from?” “New York!”

“Oh migosh, I love New York City, that’s so cool!”

Being from upstate New York truly is an eternal struggle.

The conversation usually goes something like that and it ends with me saying “No, not The City, upstate, like 5 hours from New York City.”

More often than not people are dismayed to hear this, and many, shockingly, don’t know that there is, indeed, more to New York (State) than the city.

So yes, to answer the question you may be asking, New York is a state.

Although the city has the largest amount of people per capita in it than anywhere else in the state, it is a very small area of the state.

Crazy, I know. There a lot of cities in New York, and a lot of towns.

It’s honestly funny to me when people are confused about there being more to New York than the city, it seems they’re under the impression the city is its own state.

Major LOL at that one, I have to admit.

The upstate New York struggle was the worst when I was living in Spain because people really don’t know much about U.S. geography, which isn’t surprising, it’s not like I knew a whole bunch about the geography of Spain. It was comical trying to explain this.

This upstate New York struggle made me a lot more sympathetic to other people though.

I mean at least I’m from a state that foreigners know the name of, even if they only know it because of NYC. How many foreigners have heard of Iowa?

This struggle is also real for other states. This struggle taught me something valuable: to not assume anything, even the city where someone is from.

I don’t blame anyone for bad geography knowledge, but hopefully, after reading this you learned to not assume where anyone’s from based on their initial response.

Get to know them, ask a follow-up question or two.