In any social interaction, one bears only a part, but definitely a part, of the burden, and so do the others. The onus shouldn't be all on "the new guy." The "group" bears a part of the burden, too. There has to be a fit. For example, take the CERT people I trained with (and whom I continue to meet with regularly) as a group. During training, one well-intentioned instructor said something to the effect of, "there are some foreigners in our town, so terrorism could happen here." She was aware that most foreigners are not terrorists, and of course she was aware that CERT doesn't deal with terrorism. This is the sort of thinking of someone who's been kind of isolated from the larger world: outsiders = danger. Sure, there are nutty, paranoid big city folks who think foreigners are terrorists, but I'd think most people realize that there are so many foreigners living amidst us, that citizenship is a really poor, really impractical litmus test for catching a terrorist. I don't know about the foreign folks in the town, but I wouldn't want to befriend that particular CERT person. I put up enough nonsense at work already. I don't need to get it from my friends.

As for hard-working and humble, there are some people like that in small towns. But objectively, small-town people just don't have the economic opportunities to work as hard as some big city folks. Some friends of mine (employed by NYC firms) went to work at 7 AM, and came home at 12 AM. Yes, you read the times right. Sure, the company took them to and back from work in limousines, but many of them developed health problems. As for humility, this is something that needs to be tested for it to be real. Not saying it can't happen in a small town, but certainly other places offer more opportunities for trials of life. But all of this is just statistics and probabilities. Character always comes down to the individual, and true character is as hard to find in a big city as in a small town.