Pop the bubble

I’ve lived in the same house in Foothill Ranch my entire life. I’ve enjoyed more than a handful of Christmases at the beach and it’s almost always a good time to be outside. I live with my parents, my two younger siblings and my Uma (grandma). Our house is always full of dogs running around or someone coming home with shouts of welcome or something cooking.

It’s a good life. But something else has always called me away from the comfort of my home.

Whenever it’s cloudy or the temperature drops even slightly, I bundle up in layers of clothes and blankets; I get cold easily, and my family teases that I’ll never survive anywhere cold. When it rains I have a tendency to yank the screen off my window and stick my head out into the downfall of tiny droplets. My dad hates putting my screen back on. When we head up to Mammoth during season, I indulge in fuzzy socks and snowboarding and lots and lots of tea.

So I’m here, on the East Coast, looking at places I may spend the next four years of my life. When I’m asked what I wanted out of a college I always reply with three consistent answers:

1. I want a good English department, preferably with a focus in creative writing

2. I want wherever I go to be located in a place I can be successful as a writer

3. I want it to be cold.

I want to experience seasons instead of a warm and breezy 75 nearly year-round. I want to wear layers upon layers of clothes and beanies and scarves as I trek through snowy grounds. I want cold.

There won’t be a house with a rambunctious family or an abundance of sunshine, and honestly, that’s slightly intimidating, which is a logical feeling towards uprooting your life. But I think that’s what makes the experience of college even more amazing.

College is a time you do everything on your own — your own laundry, your own food shopping, your own living. My mom won’t be there to remind me about the huge essay on the kitchen counter I almost forgot and my dad won’t be there to make me the best sandwiches in the history of sandwiches. I won’t have my brother editing footage on his go-pro while repeatedly telling me, “Come look at this!” and I won’t have my little sister singing songs without end.

I’ll be somewhere cold and away from my friends and my home of nearly 18 years.

And somehow that only excites me.

Feb. 15, 2015: Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ

On the coldest day of the year, Feb. 15, in what locals are telling me over 10 years, I’m walking the grounds of Seton Hall University, a small Catholic university only 15 miles from New York City. My mom, Sabrina, and I are bundled up in layers of warm clothes, which we unceremoniously strip off after each entrance into a new heated building. We also have trouble putting all our jackets on when we have to go back outside, the frequent costume changes a foreign concept to us. Every time we get asked the “Where are you guys from?” question and reply with “Southern California” we are greeted with incredulous faces and disbelieving replies along the lines of “Why the hell are you all the way over here in this weather when you could be at the beach?”

I cannot tell you how many times I was asked why I want to go to school over here.

I’d reply with a shrug and some sort of noncommittal noise that started to annoy even myself. These people would look at me, as if I was oblivious to everything around me and say, “It’s so cold here!”

What? Really?! All the snow on the ground and the 30mph wind and constant chit-chat about the freezing temperatures must’ve escaped my attention.

But none of that bothered me. And when the tour finally commenced, I trotted over to Stafford Hall to attend a crash course on what majoring in English and Creative Writing was all about.

Learning about all the courses and the perks of being an English major got me seriously psyched for college. I mean, I already was psyched, I have been since sixth grade. But now that it’s actually time for me to start making decisions, I can’t seem to be anything but excited all the time.

Some of my friends are comfortable in SoCal, only applying to California schools and relishing in how amazing it will be to go to college in the best state ever. I disagree, though. College is about going somewhere foreign and establishing who you are as a person all by yourself. I encourage anyone who is even slightly considering going out of state for college to pursue that interest with intensity.

I consent that it was slightly intimidating to think of residing all the way across the country, away from everything I was used to, everything that I had grown up doing, but that’s logical — everyone fears the unknown. But college is about taking that step into something out of the norm, so I find comfort in the negative temperature with wind chill and snow-covered earth, because that definitely qualifies as being a new obstacle to conquer.

Feb. 17, 2015: Emerson College, Boston, MA

After an unbearably hot train ride from Newark to Boston, an afternoon six-block trek with suitcases through narrowed sidewalks and snow barriers, and a few hours of relaxation at the hotel, we have arrived in Boston. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been in the city, and it can’t be more different than how I recall it looking. Sidewalks have been carved out of the 5-foot snow piles so people can shove through, huge trucks filled to the brim with snow are shuttling the icy slush out of the city, and the Boston Common is basically filled to the brim with mini mountains of snow. The residents of Boston are tired of the constant life-sized snow globe weather and the hassles of the snow-related traffic and transportation troubles.

I think it’s perfect here.

A night spent in the hotel lobby with my eyes glancing between the Boston Globe spread in front of me and the people rushing about in the snow flurries outside was the perfect way to spend my first night in the city.

The next morning my mom and I shuffled through the slush with a few almost-falls-on-my-butts, but we arrived at a local Starbucks unscathed and with cold noses. As I would later learn on my tour, the Starbucks we attended is only one of the five coffee shops within a minute of the campus, and the campus really is not that large.

Being a school that is solely focused on the arts and communication, Emerson College is a place you go when you know what you want. With only four branches within the college — visual arts, performing arts, writing, literature, and publishing and communication — the classes that students apply for are classes that will further a student’s experience in the field they plan on entering.

This college appeals to me a lot because I know what I want to do; I know I want to write, whether it be articles or books or short stories. I want to work on a piece and witness it published somewhere anyone can see it. With connections in a city bursting with internships, Emerson set students up with promising futures as soon as they step through their doors.

The location of the school as well — right off of Boston Common and in the heart of the Theatre District — provides opportunities for students to immerse themselves in the real world instead of confining themselves to the regular college campus.

Emerson is a place you go to get things done.

Quite possibly the best perk of this “get it done” college is the plethora of food options that surround the campus. Not to belittle the school (if that’s even possible), but food is very important. Little cafés, plenty of coffee and a library that is home to the “eat, sleep, drink, study” mantra all compile together to make a perfect home for future food critics and writers.

If you find yourself wanting to make movies, act on stage, report news to the public or share your opinion with others through literary works, Emerson is a place that you should definitely consider.

There are so many amazing places to see on this planet, and I plan on utilizing my time here to see as much of the world as I can. College is a time for high school students to venture away from their norms and into something adventurous, whether that be a location that actually experiences the four seasons or somewhere that challenges you academically. It’s a time to venture away from the comfort of your home and family and have the flu without your mother there to dote on you, or to go out to buy your own groceries and make your own meals.

College is a place you should go that is unconventional, a place that isn’t Southern California. A place where, yes, maybe there are 5-foot snow piles in the street, because there won’t be a time in your life where you’ll be fresh out of high school and unexperienced like when you graduate. I encourage juniors who are college searching to pop the OC bubble and venture out into the world to make your name known.