FRESHMAN BLUES

The phone rang. It was Katie, calling from college. The tone was different. Lighter. Higher. Happier. The way I'd expected it to be from the start.

I've been cheerleading from the sidelines since September. Cheering for touchdowns that haven't been scored. Applauding plays that haven't been made.

I had the script. The one that read, "College is the best time of your life. Enjoy it. After that, it's work and misery." Assuming the script was required reading for college freshmen, I'd figured that each of my kids would listen to their cues and have a blast for four years.

Those weren't the noises I was hearing. I kept waiting for the conversations. The ones that began with "I can't believe how much fun college is. I love the people in my dorm. My classes are stimulating."

She had her reasons, which I guess I understood. Roommate incompatibility. Missed her old friends.

Reasons aside, I hadn't heard the angels singing on the other end of the phone. "You shouldn't," her Uncle Derek said. "I was miserable my freshman year."

You were miserable your freshman year? Of course you were miserable. You were in Portland. Portland is gorgeous. In order for Portland to be gorgeous, it rains 364 days a year. The day it doesn't rain, the sun comes out and it's so luminous that people will go another 364 days just to experience it again.

Portland is not like Davis. Davis is like Bakersfield with bigger trees, quainter restaurants and better bike paths.

Davis is like Bakersfield except that everybody has a degree in chemical engineering.

Davis is like home.

That's what I thought. Turns out I'd skipped a line in the script. The one that read, "There's no place like home."

Which brings me to the call the other day. The one that was lighter, cheerier and happier.

"Dad, I haven't been as homesick lately. I wasn't this time, until the group of friends I was with turned on the [Sacramento] Kings game. That made me miss the Lakers. I can't cheer for the Kings," she said.

That showed good sense. I asked her how things were going. I barely finished asking the question before she answered it.

"I love my new roommate [she'd swapped with someone down the hall]. We're meeting lots of nice people. Our room has turned into a hangout."

I asked her what she was doing now.

"We're cleaning up the room."

She'd said room, but she might as well have said "home." That's what her room was becoming. Home.

I'd forgotten. Twenty-eight years away from college and you forget. College doesn't start until you make peace with leaving home. Grieve the loss of the daily rituals. The good meals. The brother who makes you laugh. The saying good morning and good night to your mother.

It doesn't start until, one day, you look around your 15-by-10-foot room and decide you'd rather be there than the presidential suite at the Hilton.

Leaving home. Start by tossing out the script. That's a chapter everyone must write themselves.

— Herb Benham, staff columnist for The Bakersfield Californian, where this article first appeared

When you work in a place as long as I have—going on 28 years—you think you know everything about it, or at least everything along the paths and hallways you've chosen as your usual route to and from your house, your office, the library, the Coffee House. Same trees, same buildings, same crack in the asphalt you've been negotiating for years. Of course things change—a new building here, a tree removed there—but mostly the scene stays the same. Mostly, but not always.

Some years ago I left my office in Mrak Hall at the end of the day and began my walk home, taking the path that runs behind the Grounds Division. As I neared the back of the theater building, I happened to glance to my right and there, half-hidden by the shrubbery, was a man dressed in typical Bedouin garb, crouching down and holding the reins of a kneeling camel—a live one. As my eyes widened and I was about to make some kind of startled exclamation, the man put his finger to his lips in the classic "sssh" gesture. I made no sound and walked on.

For years, I've wondered about that man and that camel. What were they doing there? Was it a surprise for someone in the drama department? If so, for whom? And why a camel, for heaven's sake? Was there a production going on that had an Arabian theme, and did they just want to keep the camel out of the dressing room? Why did the man want me to stay quiet? And most pressing and puzzling of all, where did the camel come from, and how did it get to campus and back home?

Occasionally, I think maybe I imagined that scene (and frankly, now I'm not sure if the man was dressed in Arab garb or if I just think he ought to have been). But I know I saw it—it's not the kind of thing a person makes up, after all—and I cherish that silent little tableau of the man, the camel and the bushes. And now that I've written about it, it's possible that someone reading this will recognize himself. If so, do me a favor and don't tell me what was really going on, OK? The reality couldn't be nearly as interesting as the possibilities.

— Barbara Anderson, associate editor of UC Davis Magazine

PORTABLE WISDOM

I love the campus bookstore. To my friends, this is like admiring the IRS or the dentist. At best, they consider the bookstore to be a necessary evil. They complain about textbooks costing more than $50, $75 or even $100. They moan about the long lines in the beginning of the quarter. I listen patiently. "Yes, you're right," I say, "but still...."

Maybe I am crazy, but who said love is rational?

Entering the bookstore gives me the jolt of energy that a gambler must feel when stepping into a casino. All is possible. To walk down the aisles is to walk through the course catalog. Neatly aligned on the shelves are the materials for every class: Shakespeare, psychology, statistics.

To stand among the textbooks is to stand in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and contemplate the directions you might take. Maybe you should sign up for this sociology course or this one on public policy. Don't have the time this quarter? At least you can buy the books.

I never go through these aisles without getting materials for courses for which I'm not registered. This probably causes problems. I can picture the professor saying, "But I ordered enough for everyone...." Some books, however, simply look too interesting. Besides, I tell myself, there are always those students who don't buy the texts. I've never understood such students, the ones who resent having to purchase the materials. To me it seems strange to resist buying a $30 book after paying thousands of dollars in tuition and fees.

I also have never understood those students who sell their books back immediately after taking the final. Once the course is over, the book is what you have left. In the future, you can never go back to the class, but you can go back to the reading. If you took terrible notes or you have a bad memory or you didn't get it in the first place, you can try again. Buying these books and keeping them is like buying an educational insurance policy.

The library offers the accumulated wisdom of the ages for free. The catch, however, is that you can have the materials for only a limited time. But the bookstore materials? You buy them, and they're yours. You can take them home. You can take them when you leave Davis. You can take them wherever you go. That's what I love.

— Joseph Mills, Ph.D. '98