I've been on vacation and of course on hiatus concerning this site.  It's a bit refreshing to liberate myself from the grind of school, work, and attempting to type thought out thoughts on a computer.  But that aside, I'm a little more inclined to talk and be productive again. 

Over the weekend, I visited UC Santa Cruz for the first time, for a friend's graduation.  Through the graduation speeches and taking general observations, I could now see the... "importance"... "experience"... that people typically correlate with college in America.  The idea that college is this wonderfully unique experience where you are practically consumed into an entirely different life, opposed to the rest of your living days.  Visiting this campus, I could see how utterly detached it was from the rest of the city, to the point where in ways, it was its own city.  Speakers at the graduation reminisced not only on their often difficult experiences and how it helped them grow, but how they did it as a unit and a group.  People who knew each other.  Anyway, coming from a commuter school, I thought it was a bit enlightening that at least I could see this concept from the outside looking in, at the very least.  It helps explain the abundance of college alumni caps/sweaters/tshirts/other marketed material that people wear.   I'm hoping that I'll have this sort of bond in my cohort next semester. 

Pictures from Santa Cruz--

the graduate and me plus two friends



me atop a hill on ucsc