Thanks for coming to CityMatch™! We’re really happy you could make it. Please, have a seat over there. We here at CityMatch™ have been working tirelessly help to assimilate you to your first post-college, metropolitan city living experience. Our resident team of supercomputers use a randomized, 14-point compatibility algorithm to ensure that your transition into this new life will be smooth and painless. We know that giving up college life for adulthood is sometimes disappointing, but don’t worry, we here at CityMatch™ will teach you how to find the joy in your new-found adulthood. 

Here, take this pamphlet, and memorize everything inside of it, it has the complete vernacular used to express your exaggerated appreciation for all the foods the city has to offer. In no time, you will expand your lexicon to include essential city jargon like “Artisan”, “Brewmaster”, and “Gorgonzola”. Until now, you’ve spent your entire adult life going to “parties” and getting “tanked”. Well, that was college, and college is over. From now on, you will spend your time going to bars and restaurants, to talk to friends and coworkers about the bars and restaurants you were at yesterday. 

It’s important that you buy a Messenger Backpack right away. Sure, it just looks like an airplane-seatbelt that goes over your chest (and if you’ve been in an airplane before, you know that isn’t how that goes), but it’s actually a slated insignia of bikeliness. Proudly sash it across your personage, to make other city inhabitants think you ride a bike—always giving people the impression that you ride a bike is a very important part of living in a city (possibly the most important part). Not only will this help expedite your assimilation into normative city culture, making people think you are a cyclist means you are pretending to be working towards doing your infinitesimal part in preserving the planet. Very important city stuff. Very important. 

In the mean time, here is a totebag.  Just write the name of your startup on the side of it. Yes, you work at a startup now, you just moved to the city, remember? It’s not hard work, just show up and be professional. Try to limit the frequency of bringing your cat to work to two days a week, and in meetings, take your nose ring out before you pick your nose. Remember, professionalism is key. You’ll do great, just think of every work day as a theme party, where the theme is ‘Cargo Shorts’. Look, here comes the Vice President of your startup now! His job is to wander around your company looking concerned, flailing his arms and violently flexing his face. Don’t worry If he constantly asks you ambiguous questions about “where you see yourself in 5 months”—that’s totally normal. The purpose of these questions are both to make you realize your own lack of foresight, and routinely call into question your job security.

Now, seeing as apartments are very expensive here in the city, you are going to need some roommates. Having roommates will allow you to not have to take residence in an unsuitable living situation, like in your car or in a lazily-gentrified ethnic neighborhood. Looking at the report that that our resident supercomputer has produced, we have matched you with some compatible roommates down to a level of .001% accuracy. The system is very good, it put the ladies from TLC together in a studio apartment in the 90’s. Let’s meet your roommates: Gwen, Ivan, and Roots. Now, Gwen spends her time in the living room drowning her social anxiety with a synthesis of pot and cat-ownership. Ivan will have no money, but an inexplicable plenitude of bicycles, and will often offer his least favorite bike in lieu of paying his share of rent. Roots is an eco-terrorist who is intent on, as he puts it, “exploding congress”. He also bakes gluten-free muffins! You guys will get along famously.

I think you are ready to go out there. Thank you for choosing CityMatch™, and on behalf of myself and my resident team of supercomputers, welcome to the big city! Before you go, I want you to meet Tony. This is Tony, he’s a magical elf who will follow you around and talk about how your coffee place is inferior to his. All residents of the city are issued one, but you have to put down a deposit of $100 and promise you won’t leave him locked up to a parking meter overnight. Now go make the best of everything this city has to offer, and start planning your inevitable move to a different city.