(Photo: Occidental College near Los Angeles. Credit: Photos by Leah Karlins).

THERE'S LOTS TO LEARN ON CAMPUS TOURS

BY LEAH KARLINS, Read This! writer 

What do “Clueless,” “The Phallus” and Barack Obama have in common?  They’ve all been at Occidental College, a.k.a Oxy.  I applied in the fall but didn’t get a chance to visit the campus in greater Los Angeles until late January. 

For those of you planning college visits this spring, here’s a preview of what you might expect. 

2:45 p.m. Tuesday: I arrive at the San Jose airport, buy some gum and board the plane.  My flight is only an hour long. I’ll be soaking up the SoCal sun in no time.

(Photo: At San Jose airport, I'm smiling because I don't know yet that my flight is going to be delayed three hours.)

3:47 p.m.: Either the change in pressure is causing me to hallucinate or ... we haven’t even left the ground yet.  Turns out it’s the latter (should I be relieved?). Apparently the navigation system isn’t working and the flight is officially canceled. We’re kicked off, shepherded into line and given last-priority boarding passes for the 5:15 flight.  Being an adult is so much fun!

4:30 p.m.: I’m saved from staring mindlessly at the carpet patterns by a conversation with the girl next to me.  She’s just graduated from Harvard, and she happily gives me some tips for the collegiate experience:

• Internships are key! Apply early, like in February, for the paid ones.
• If you’re thinking about grad school, freshman year is the time to dabble in different things and not get perfect grades.  Sophomore through senior year, grades count.
• Going to school on the other side of the country has its ups (endless opportunities, other colleges close by) and downs (she got homesick, and the winters were cold).

6:48 p.m.: After landing in Burbank and hopping on a shuttle, I get dropped off in front of the fountain at Occidental and, right on cue, it starts to rain.  Probably for the first time in months. My timing is impeccable, as always. 

(Photo: This is where I was dropped off at Oxy. It's fondly referred to as the "Star Trek" fountain.) 

6:52 p.m.: My host student, Aiden, and her roommate, Jackie, pick me up and take me to their dorm room in the women’s center across the street from campus.  We sit in their room and chat for a while about their majors (Aiden’s is classic civilizations, Jackie’s is religious studies), Daniel Radcliffe’s recent foray into nude theater and why they’re rooting for Obama for president (he’s an Occidental alumnus, incidentally).

(Photo: This is Aiden, the student who was my host. She loves her laptop.) 

7:15 p.m.:  I check out the communal bathroom and am welcomed by a sign posted on the back of the stall door instructing me how to be a proper commode artist.  It concludes, “Know of any toilet artists that deserve recognition? E-mail submissions to toiletmaster@mcommode.net.”  I know what you’re thinking — shouldn’t it be “any toilet artists who deserve recognition?”

 
(Photo: This sign is posted in a stall in the dorm bathroom.) 

7:30 p.m.: We head to the Cooler, the campus coffeehouse, so I can grab some pizza with one of the $12 meal vouchers Oxy sent me.  Everything is cheap, so $12 goes a long way. I stock up on bottled water, cut-up melon, ice cream, soda … I could get used to this.
 
8:45 p.m.: Downstairs in the lounge of the women’s center, we watch “Gilmore Girls” and then “Clueless.”  A couple of times, the girls next to me say, “Hey, there’s Johnson Hall!” or whatever because "Clueless" was filmed on the Oxy campus.  Not a bad claim to fame. We also catch snatches of “The Daily Show” and “The Simpsons.”  I guess there’s not a whole lot of homework the first week of the semester. 

10:15 p.m.: When we return to the room, Jackie actually does some homework (OK, maybe they do have some) while we all chat some more.  I can tell they’re college students because of the way they talk about saving money; Jackie avoids buying paper by printing on the reverse of printouts from the school library.  I guess the downside of no parental supervision is no source of quick cash.  Aiden is actually transferring next year because Oxy just cut her major.  She’s bummed about that, but she talks enthusiastically about her professors. 

12:30 p.m.: All the waiting around at the airport exhausted me — time to hit the sack.  My folding cot takes up literally all the free space in the room.  At least it’s cozy.

8:22 a.m. Wednesday: Rise and shine! And, let’s see, I’ll just retreat into my private room to change … not.  Well, something to get used to.

8:55 a.m.: Aiden takes me to the admissions office, where I pick up a map and the friendly intern helps me find a 9:30 class to check out.  As I head over, I stop by the Cooler to grab a blueberry muffin and some juice.

9:30 a.m.: I sit down in a small seminar class of about 15 students.  The last thing I want to do right now is call attention to myself, but it seems unavoidable unless I want to be asked why I didn’t do the reading. I get the teacher’s attention from across the room and introduce myself as a prospective student.  Luckily, she welcomes me and then moves on to the discussion of “discipline in education.”  Who knew that a class about methods of punishment and the historical shift from “rituals to surveillance” could actually be interesting?  

10:30 a.m.: I head back to the admissions office for a campus tour, which consists of … me and my tour guide.  I guess January isn’t exactly peak visit month.  Luckily, my guide Kera is totally awesome. As she takes me around, pointing out important buildings and talking about Oxy programs, I learn that she pole vaults, is majoring in diplomacy and world affairs with an emphasis on Africa, is a member of a sorority and plans to intern with the Clinton Foundation this summer. She takes me in to see an alarmingly clean dorm room, inhabited by two football-playing brothers.  It has your standard beds, desks, closets and enormous jars of muscle-building protein blends.

11:30 a.m.: Time for a “group info session,” which translates into a private chat with an admissions officer.  She talks about the admissions decision process, Oxy programs, financial aid -- the standard spiel.

12:15 p.m.: I check out the main dining hall on campus with $12 more to burn.  Contrary to its reputation, the food actually looks really appetizing.  A friendly chef cooks me some pesto and chicken pasta to order. I grab a salad, cookie and a soda — which ends up being a bad decision, when a backpack-clad student in front of me swings around, unwittingly knocking my soda cup to the floor and spilling soda all over my tray.  Can you say awkward? I’m relieved when a nice girl from the seminar class I just visited helps me pick up the cup and get a new tray.

(Photo: Not only was this a free lunch, that pasta was cooked to order. Yum!) 

Crisis resolved, I sit down at a table with some un-intimidating-looking Oxy sophomores. We chat and I find out that two of them have actually transferred to Oxy from other schools they didn’t like.  “The whole college decision isn’t that big of a deal,” one of them tells me.  “Because you can always switch.”

(Photo: I chatted with these sophomores during lunch.) 

The conversation moves on to an article in the school newspaper that is getting a lot of attention across campus.  An Occidental class has topped a list, called the “Dirty Dozen” and published by a conservative newspaper, of the most liberal, theoretical classes at colleges.  The Oxy class in question is called “The Phallus.”  Oxy is also the only school to have two classes on the list; the other is called “Blackness.”

(Photo: This is the article in the Oxy newspaper that generated a lot of buzz.) 

1:30 p.m.: I enter a class that the nice admissions intern told me would be about human rights but actually appears to be Spanish literature.  It’s lucky that I hablo espanol.  The class discusses a short story called “Las Medias Rojas,” and I’m relieved to be able to follow along reasonably well.  Until my cell phone rings … embarrassing!  Turns out the shuttle driver thought I was being picked up at 2, but actually I was planning on leaving at …

2:30 p.m.: I say goodbye to Occidental and head back to the airport.  Well, it’s been a fun trip.  So, am I hooked?  The best way to express my feelings is what I saw on a button at the Oxy bookstore: “I was undecided, but now I’m not sure.”

Leah Karlins is a senior at Branham High in San Jose.

(Photos: Scenes from Oxy.)