Two weeks ago, I abandoned my academic responsibilities, packed my suitcase and went on a five-day trip to New York City with the Mizzou Magazine Club. It was glorious. But what could possibly drive a group of 24 college students to skip class and flying up to the Big Apple, you ask?

Well, when I first decided to go to Mizzou, I read a blog post from the J-School Buzz (anyone remember them?) about journalism emphasis stereotypes. I remember it said something like print students thought their emphasis was the only hard one, strat commers were cop-outs who couldn’t make it through reporting, and magazine students all wanted to move to New York.

I’ve never really been that person. Friends has been my favorite show since the dawn of time, but moving to New York never held that much appeal for me. I’d only visited the city before in one- or two-day spurts, and it just seemed dirty and crowded and stressful.

So, back to the original question, why New York? Well, it’s the capital of the magazine industry. Most major magazine brands are headquartered in NYC. If you want to work in the magazine world, chances are that you’re going to end up in New York. So that’s where we go. Each year, the Magazine Club takes a trip to New York City to visit magazine offices and talk to their editors (many of them Mizzou alums).

Before we left, we got to pref which magazines we wanted to visit most, and I got to visit all the ones I wanted: HGTV Magazine, Food Network Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Self, Allure, Martha Stewart Living, Women’s Health and Men’s Health. The other magazines were Esquire, Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated, Glamour, Us Weekly and Seventeen. Basically, we had a knockout lineup.

At first, New York City was everything I’d remembered. We were welcomed initially by a flight cancelation that landed us in Newark instead of LaGuardia. Our cab driver bullied us into paying more than we needed to, and we arrived at our hotel exhausted. But just the next day, things started to turn around.

We started off our first day with three trips. I went to HGTV and Food Network, and we all went to Entertainment Weekly. The offices of HGTV Magazine were everything I’d dreamed of. The perfect mix of typical magazine office and trendy HGTV decorations. If you know anything at all about me, you know I love HGTV. The editors were so incredibly nice, and when they asked us if we wanted to live in New York, for the first time, my answer was maybe.

The next day, we also Real Simple and talked with like, ten different people on their staff. They were even kind enough to point us to an awesome Chinese place for lunch. The second two magazine visits were in the One World Trade Center. We got to ignore the loud man handing out ads telling us the memorial was on the other side and go in through the employee entrance. The offices of Allure and Self were both beautiful, and the people were so helpful and kind.

We left the offices on a different of the building than where we came in, and everything in sight was white or marble or white marble. It was beautiful. The paintings on the wall were all colorful abstract art, which was a stunning contrast to the stark white all around us. Pretty impressive, Conde Naste. Pretty impressive.

It was our second official day being in New York, and my wonderful friend (and fellow Vox survivor) Hilary invited me to come with her to see Jake Silverstein, editor-in-chief of New York Times Magazine, speak at Columbia. It felt a little odd to be at an event in a rival journalism school (even if they only offer a master’s program), but it was a great Q&A session, and the campus is absolutely stunning.

On our very last magazine day, we visited Martha Stewart Living and the shared offices of Men’s Health and Women’s Health. It was a long day of running to catch the subway and pulling my dress out of puddles in the street, but it was all worth it when a member of our group suggested we hit up Grand Central Station for dinner (or, for those of us who had been running late all day, breakfast).

I’d seen Grand Central in movies and pictures, but this was my first time actually being there in person. It was smaller than I’d imagined, but it was no less beautiful. We couldn’t find the restaurants and had to ask for directions from employees. They pointed us toward the giant sign engraved into the wall that said “DINING.”

The food at Junior’s was good, but we were really just there to check out the cheesecake. It did not disappoint. There were at least a dozen different options to choose from, but I opted for the Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake. Absolutely no regrets. It looked so good that I took a bite before I could even get my camera out to take a picture.

After we finished our dessert, we went to the MU alum networking event being held at Percy’s Tavern, a supposed Mizzou sports bar (it mostly seemed like a soccer bar, but I did see one Tigers sign). It was fun enough, but drinks are expensive and networking is hard, so I wasn’t bent on staying too long.

Hilary came through once again and took me as her +1 to a party The Nation was throwing at the Museum of Modern Art to celebrate the screening of their documentary. We got there pretty late, but it felt super cool to be in the museum after hours with a friend. Is this New York???

Honestly, what made this trip different from all the ones I’d taken in the past was that I was with a group of students who had lived in New York once or multiple times before, and they knew all the best spots. We hit up Strand Books, famous for their 18 miles of books, and Grey Dog, famous for their amazing brunch. We were starving, and it was perfect.

After brunch, we went to Greenwich Letterpress. To my shame, I’ve still never seen Gilmore Girls, but a bunch of people in our group love it, and Greenwich Letterpress makes custom Gilmore Girls keychains (one for Luke’s Diner and one for the Dragonfly Inn) that are apparently in hot demand.

This trip really exceeded my expectations in every way. Not only was my Instagram game super strong all week, but for the first time, I understand the New York thing. I’ve always understood wanting to live in a place where a slice of pizza is always a block or two away, but never the “life of the city” everyone was always talking about. Now, I think I get it. There are so many opportunities and possibilities, and that drives people to move out there with nothing but $30 and a suitcase. I’m not saying that’s my plan, but hey, you only live once.