On May 20, I stood at a podium at Soldiers & Sailors Military Museum and Memorial in Oakland and gave a commencement speech to 190 of my fellow Carnegie Mellon classmates. Today I sit at a computer in Washington, D.C. -- my hometown -- writing about missing a city I used to think I would never even warm up to.

I moved to Pittsburgh for what turned out to be the four most rewarding years of my life. My Iranian-born parents, who both went to college in D.C. and decided never to leave, kept telling me that I would get used to the smoke from the steel mills. Yes, that was the impression with which I came to Pittsburgh. In 2003.

My first phone call to my parents went something like this: "Mom, I hate it here. They have crazy accents, it's always raining, and I want to come home." My mom told me to stop calling my high school buddies and encouraged me to meet new friends at school.

I became friends with two boys who lived a floor above me -- one from Murrysville, the other from Greensburg -- and soon found out how quickly I adapt to exotic accents. I began accenting the ends of questions, enunciating my "O's", referring to Downtown as "dahntahn," and, of course, talking about the Stillers.

My newly acquired accent and sudden love for pierogis and Primanti Bros. sandwiches fazed none of my new black-and-gold-wearing friends. But when I went home for my first weekend visit to D.C., my parents and friends all looked at me as if I had been completely brainwashed.

A few months into my new vernacular, I went home for Christmas. My break was filled with endless discussions with my big Persian family -- all revolving around what life was like for the first daughter/niece/cousin to go to college outside of D.C or Virginia. They all wanted to know what the steel mills were like, if it was always cloudy because of the smoke and if I missed D.C.

The truth was, of course, that I missed D.C. I missed its cultural diversity. I missed not having to explain the difference between Iran and Iraq. I missed having national political scandals as local news. I missed it not raining all the time.

But Pittsburgh wasn't the gloomy steel town everyone told me it was. I discovered a great financial district, amazing museums and exhibits, top-ranked universities, wonderful stores and restaurants, and, most importantly (to me anyway), the most passionate football fans I had ever seen.

I'm a huge Redskins fan. I live, eat, drink, sleep and die with the Redskins. But there are only a handful of crazy fans like me in Washington. I was jealous of the passion here. I was jealous of the people driving around with Steelers flags on their cars 365 days a year, and of an entire city that tailgated every Sunday like it was Super Bowl Sunday. I couldn't help but fall into the Pittsburgh trap.

It took four years to convince my family that I could like the Steelers and the Redskins, that Pittsburgh had really cleaned up and that it wasn't just a smoky steel city anymore. But I still had trouble convincing them that Pittsburgh was a city with the most unique culture of any place I had ever been before.

It took four years, a graduation ceremony and a student commencement speech to finally get my whole family to come see what I had been trying to explain to them for so long. One weekend in Pittsburgh finally changed their view. And if a picture is worth 1,000 words, I'm pretty sure the view from Mount Washington was worth about 10,000.

I sat through dinner that night, listening to my parents and aunts and grandparents talk about how beautiful Downtown was, how cool the view of Heinz Field was, and how far Pittsburgh had come from its days as a steel city. And how far it was from their own expectations. By the end of the night, they couldn't wait to explore more of the city the next day. And to go to Primanti's for lunch.

I understand old, outdated stereotypes. My family is quick to judge based on them. And the unfortunate truth is that Pittsburgh is often judged by a set of old, outdated stereotypes. As someone who didn't even grow up in Pittsburgh, the outside view of this great city bothers me.

Something happened in the four years I was here -- this city took me in and accepted me into its unique culture. So while I will always pledge my allegiance to our nation's capital, I will always fight to educate people about how Pittsburgh is one of this great country's truly defining cities.

Maybe the good news here is as thousands of converted college graduates leave each year, thousands more can educate their friends and families about how wonderful Pittsburgh really is.

I was educated four years ago; my family was educated in May. And four years from now, another Carnegie Mellon grad's family will understand that their son or daughter spent the last four years in a truly wonderful city.