Remember about 6 months ago, when I was posting entries about my history in education that were more like outlines of my life and never really said anything at all about my actual education? If you don't remember, or are new to this blog since then, here is Part 1: Preschool-6th Grade, here is Part 2: 7th Grade, and here is Part 3: 8th-12th Grade. So now, half a year later, here's Part 4 about my first attempt at college. It's kind of a shitty one to come back with because it's a little depressing.
College-UCSC
I always kind of knew I wasn't that interested in college, but I was expected to go, and I assumed it would be ok. I got accepted into UC Santa Cruz, and I went to check it out beforehand and my general impression was little more than that it wasn't San Diego, which was all I needed to know. The college is divided up into all these sections, and like all the weird, eccentric kids were put into Porter, and all the minorities were in Oak or something I forget what it was called, and there was a gay section too. I was put in Kresge, with the other straight white people. What was awesome about Kresge was that instead of dorms, they had actual apartments. The catch was that I had seven roommates, but it was worth it because we had our own kitchen and living room, and two bathrooms. I shared my bedroom with one other person who I liked a lot even though we had maybe three conversations the whole year. His girlfriend, who I hated, lived down the hall (the apartment was coed) and shared a room with two other girls, but she basically lived in our room. I got along with most of my roommates, but the only real friend I made was one of the other girls from the 3-girl room, Erin. We eventually started kind of dating, but it was never made official. She was an ok person, but we jumped into things too quickly, and it turned out I didn't really like her enough to have that kind of a relationship with. I also wasn't physically attracted to her, but it was at a time when I was committed to being open-minded or whatever, and so I convinced myself that looks weren't that important. I actually had a huge crush on another girl from Kresge that I shared a philosophy class with who was also named Erin. She was one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen, and she showed interest in me as well. I talked to her a couple times, but it never went anywhere, and then the next quarter, she had put her hair in dreads, so I immediately lost interest, anyway.
The first quarter went mostly ok for me, though I discovered quickly that I hated writing essays, and I didn't have an analytical mind, which was problematic, and I basically had to charm my way into passing grades that I didn't deserve. I started to grow a little frustrated with how little time I had for my own stuff. I used to write constantly in those days, short stories and shit, and I basically had to give it up. But still, I felt alright.
The second quarter, everything that had been frustrating before started getting worse. Things with Erin 2 ended in a really ugly and stressful way, my sleep schedule was all over the fucking place due to early morning classes I couldn't adjust to, I was stressed out by the amount of schoolwork I had and how much I hated doing it and how hard it was to meet the deadlines, and I still hadn't made any friends outside of the apartment. And even within the apartment, there was really only one person I got along well with, since I wasn't exactly hanging out much with Erin 2. So instead, I was taking frequent trips to Petaluma on the weekends, where my friend Anna lived, and where I had lived for a few weeks the preceding summer, and so knew lots of people, and always had a good time. The only highlight of my life in Santa Cruz were the two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that were on every night at 1am. Everything else was pretty much horrible.
By the third quarter, I was a fucking mess, and I basically had a three month long nervous breakdown. I stopped going to most of my classes, and I stopped talking to everyone around me, and was only talking to my parents over the phone, and occasionally my best friends Jennifer and Anna, but they had both grown increasingly harder to get ahold of, and for the most part, all I did was sit in front of my computer with headphones on, downloading music from Napster. About a week before the end of the year, I had a friend from Petaluma drive down, and we packed up all my stuff in the middle of the night, and I took off without saying goodbye to anyone. Later I would find out I had failed all my classes and wasn't allowed back, but obviously, that wasn't much of an issue.
My favorite movie was still Pink Flamingos, I think, but at some point Forbidden Zone took its place, I don't remember exactly when. Some of my favorite bands were Pulp, Wesley Willis, The Residents, Cyndi Lauper, Le Tigre, Crass, GWAR, Peaches, and Ween. My favorite books were Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh. Those were also my favorite books in high school, but I didn't list it in that entry, and some other favorites from both high school and college but especially high school are Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. All of those are still probably in my Top 5 even today, except now American Psycho is way ahead of all of them in first place.
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