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Where the Education Is Higher: Notes on College (& High School)
by Alec Mouhibian

Returning to high school for the first time, after many months away, has the same feel to it of returning to your mother’s womb—even with the slipperiness, if it’s a public school and you had to go to the bathroom. It is that uncanny feeling of re-entering the encapsulated location of one’s development into his current self. Though there are exceptions, high school is where people come into their characteristic own as human beings, metamorphosing from patches of pubes and globs of deodorant-free flesh into the general, if rough, form they will assume for life.

The pleasantness of one’s transition from high school to college thus depends on whether or not labor was painful, so to speak. Call me an incestuous masochist, but I found the experience a delight.

Yup, some things are just tough to leave, as I was reminded while roaming the halls of tardy-sweep yore during my visit and inhaling the old air of lofty superiority that filled my lungs regularly when I inhabited those halls for six hours every weekday—those halls where walk turned to strut, where one was a Viking! Masturbation just hasn’t been the same since.

Many, of course, hated it. Many found it suffocating. Many resented the popularity-hierarchy and “playground law” which, no matter how much more sophisticated in comparison to prior secondary schooling, still somewhat reigned within high school campus limits. Many found this annoying…and intimidating.

For such small fish, a bigger pond has much to offer: a lot of other small fish and plenty of room to avoid the big ones. But because I was, as it were, a mama’s boy, moving from a high school in Los Angeles to Isla Vista was more like going from a small pond to a slightly bigger pond where the water’s spiked with Hennessey.

***

Nearly everyone has a mental image of college as a crazy experience. The University of California at Santa Barbara (“where the education is higher”) is the physical incarnation of that image. It has a reputation for this, and nothing short of a large bodily-endowment precedes its subject quite like a reputation—a fact I was amusingly reminded of when speaking, in my hometown, to an old immigrant woman who knows more grape-leaf recipes than words in English. When I told her where I go to college, she responded: “Ah, party school.”

She was wearing a shawl and looked like the type who reads coffee cups if not necessarily English, so I probably would’ve attributed her awareness to mysticism were the awareness not so widespread elsewhere. But widespread it is, the reputation of bare legs spread wide, of blondes and beaches and beer, of experiences surreal and venereal (highest rate in the state!), of drugs and decadence and weirdness.

UCSB is the kind of place where fairy tale romances are common, if that fairy tale is Beauty and the Yeast. Just when the administration thought they had somewhat curtailed this reputation, headlines were made last Fall when a couple of prominent internet pornographers set up shop in the area and threw filmed parties. The brouhaha prompted the chancellor to issue an email to all students, denouncing any affiliation with the parties and warning us against attending them. With no exaggeration, the warning paraphrases thus: “Beware of these parties, for there will be free beer and you might get laid by a porn star.”

One might wonder why it would be necessary for the administration to dissociate itself from any party. One might be ignorant. The chancellor’s predecessor was fired for being repeatedly caught driving drunk on campus, after the many wild shindigs she would hold at her house.

Aside from the administration’s peculiar past involvement in the melee, there is one other aspect of UCSB that distinguishes it from other schools in its genre. And that’s the creepy little college town in which it is located.

Isla Vista itself is in arrested development. It sort of steamrolled into the Sixties—headbands strapped tight—and never made it out. Neither architecture nor aura has changed much since the height of IV’s hippiedom, in 1967, when a protestor threw a flaming brick into the window of the local Bank of America and burned it down. Perhaps the only difference is that the political pretense of hippiedom is gone: replaced by a laid-back apathy more suited to the sand and salt that fills the air.

At one isolated square mile against the ocean, streets lined in a grid, IV is entirely populated with college students, excepting a few nuclear families whose parents probably never learned to read a map. Ninety-five percent of those students are from California, most of whom coming from either the northern or southern parts—balancing out to a clean-cut wholesomeness that only the central part of the state is particularly known for. All of which, of course, leaves one to wonder. How does a tiny secluded place that has an inhabitant-inventory turnover rate of four years maintain such a distinct character over decades?

Perhaps environmental conditions supercede free will and the Faulknerian far-reaching effects of an area’s history are real, after all. Perhaps it is less dramatic. People are especially likely to do what they want to do when it’s also what they are supposed to do. Add hormones and history and the sea, with a little isolation so the grown-ups don’t get in the way, and there you have it.

Still, the whole is kookier than the sum of the individual parts. When evening arrives in IV and the weather gets silver and random screams mix with the wind, the Eagles classic One Of These Nights almost naturally accompanies their sound in the back of one’s mind. Frequently the front page of the next morning’s paper confirms that it was, indeed, one of those nights. No one is ever surprised.

The town reminds me of the one in that Ray Bradbury novel with the freaky carnival. Standing on a street in IV, you can utter the line from Macbeth from which that novel derives its title, in the appropriate sinister accent—By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes—and turn to see a pirate walking toward you. His name actually is Pirate. He wears an eye-patch and a headscarf. A dark and frightening-looking bum, he is known for his stories, his card tricks, and his alarming captain’s coughs.

Pirate is an IV icon. He is one of a number of bums the town is famous for. Their existence is an object of some controversy, but if you ask me, the bums, except for the retarded one, are one of the most charming aspects of the place. They have senses of humor. One night I was walking back to campus when one of them asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have fitty’ million dollars on you, would ye?” I responded with laughter, but my mind said, “No, but if I did I would give it to you, you wonderful, wonderful man with a perverse odor.”

Another bum is pro-war. He can be seen riding around on his bike, screaming differences of opinion to Allah. Once I overheard him explaining the necessity for war in Iraq, in an assertive yet reasoned tone, to his fellow colleagues in a dark alley. I thought about giving him a nickel to compensate for the two cents he was giving those other guys, but decided that the principled gesture wasn’t altogether worth it, smell-wise.

***

Loose pages from my mental diary float gently onto my lap:

October 30. Tomorrow, 50,000 people from all over the state will file in to take part in a mini Mardi Gras. Halloween is by far the biggest day of the year here, yet I, due to not caring, am left without costume. Suddenly it occurs to me that, with 50,000 all partying on one street, opportunities for rubbing up against people will be myriad.

Not wanting to seem rebellious amidst a crowd of wild, half-naked, delirious hooligans, I decide to get a costume. I rush to one of those stores that apparently are open only one month a year. Most everything is sold out and I want something scary, so thinking on my feet I grab a straightjacket costume, a Hillary Clinton mask, and a three-boob chest plate.

(Tunnel-vision prevented me from knowing for sure whether mine was the best costume of the evening. But if number of nipple-pinchings is any measurement, I ruled!)

October 31. I am sitting under a tree at Storke Field when a smiling, dead gopher falls on my head. Concluding not to give it much thought, I keep the gopher as a memento.

September 19. I discover that a probable explanation for why everyone wears those goddamned flip-flops is the fact that all the shoes are hanging on the middle of cable wires in Isla Vista.

Circa January. It is Winter quarter and classes are dick-numbingly dull. Sole amusement must be reaped from observing my communications TA—whose dilemma in pronouncing the O-sound is a mix between the worst of Canadian and Chicagoan worlds—attempt to navigate the word “both.”

She never does pronounce it the same way twice. It’s as if her mouth is full of marbles and she spits them out all at once. Naturally, full efforts are employed to get her to say it as many times as possible.

She: You see, interpersonal and small group communications are really sort of the same thing, at different degrees.
Me: So, what you’re saying is, the two of them are the same…?
She: Yes.
Me: By “two of them,” you mean GODDAMMITSAYTHEWORDBOTHRIGHTNOW!
She: Um, okay. Boauehuth.
Me: Say it again!
She: Um, okay. Boouaooth.
Me (to myself): Score!

Circa November. In Psychology class, we are shown pictures of four babies. We learn that people are more likely to think that a baby is a girl if it looks like a girl.

The entire course is constituted of such controversial revelations. But on one occasion, it ventures to the topic of logical reasoning. The textbook cites a charming incidence of graffiti:

God is love
Love is blind
Ray Charles is blind
Ray Charles is God

This is an example of how an argument can be invalid, even when its conclusion is obviously true.

October 24. Front page headline in The Daily Nexus, UCSB’s daily newspaper:

Man Jerks Off At Women’s Center Fair by Jason La, Staff Writer
An unidentified man allegedly spotted masturbating in front of the Women's Center evaded capture Thursday after Women's Center staff members called the Community Service Organization and UC Police Dept. to report him….
[T]he man had been following a female student who was part of a group of students from Hermanas Unidas of UCSB. The group was selling tostadas as part of the 11th Annual National Young Women's Day of Action Feminist Faire, an event encouraging young women to become involved in politics and social issues….
The man's genitals were not exposed, Han said, but "you could tell [what he was doing] by the look on his face."
"He was pounding it," she said.
Han said Sharon Hoshida, the Women's Center programming director, confronted the man and asked him to leave. The man said he "had an itch" and did not leave, she said.
Han then called CSO for help, and the man fled toward the UCen when CSO and UCPD arrived at the scene, she said. UCPD officers pursued the man but were unable to catch him….
"What do you say to a guy who is masturbating in front of the place you work?" she said.
Megan Arch, the programming and sexual harassment coordinator for the Women's Center, said she didn't actually see the man in the act, but Han later told her what happened.
"That's really weird that happened at an event that was promoting the prevention of violence against women and sexual harassment," she said.
Arch did have advice for anyone who might be thinking of imitating the unidentified man.
"If you need to get it on with yourself, do it at home, not at the Women's Center," she said.

To this date, the perpetrator is still loose. What is not known, however, is whether he is still at large.

March 28, First Day of Spring Quarter. My Black Studies professor tells us that questions are more important than answers. He says that if he accomplishes his goal, we will “know less at the end of the quarter than we do now.” This does not seem logically possible.

June 2. You can’t argue with results.

***

So this is college.

Interesting would be a word to describe it all. The wrong word. Weird is better, or maybe stupid. UCSB is simply the type of place where, if you hear about puppy-love, it most likely has something to do with bestiality.

I was reminded again of the reputation for this weirdness when I visited my high school for the first time since graduation. I’m sure every SB student has had to endure it upon the initial return to the land of his rear-peers: the mocking greetings, by which we are asked how it’s going in “H”IV, if not so much in words as in expression. The annoyingly unsurprised look we get when telling them that there is a campus escort service. The confusion over the meaning of our mascot, the Gaucho, which I had originally thought was a Mexican cowboy, only to discover that it is actually a Venezuelan pimp.

But this is where my jurisdiction to speak on behalf of my coeds comes to an end. For none of them viewed the suspicious rope that hangs from a tree in Isla Vista as a possible sign from God, as I did during those early September days.

Most of my nostalgia was anticipated. (One thing about being introspective is that, when your deficiencies come to fruition, you are much less surprised.) The only surprise was a renewed appreciation for the politics of my former teachers. The left-of-hello? ratio among faculty was the same at my high school as it is here (though more Al Gore than Gore Vidal), but the teachers were far more open to being notified that they are wrong. Professors apparently believe that arrogance is a privilege rightly earned from a seven-and-a-half hour work week.

But my sentiments are more than just nostalgia and pointless past-dwelling. “Playground law,” you see, is actually adolescent street law, providing a dose of reality that UCSB and most universities simply lack. As Meryl Streep said, “you have to realize that real life is not like college. Real life is like high school.”

Peer pressure and popularity contests—often decried as generators of a harsh, competitive social atmosphere—are, in fact, generators of a harsh, competitive social atmosphere. That’s the beauty of it. It results in standards. It results in judgment. True, it also results in losers. But that’s what teen suicide is for. Such suicide, when committed out of an inability to either handle the pressure or not give a damn what stupid kids think, couldn’t be more Darwinian.

People get sidetracked by the fact that these standards are far less mature than those imposed by the real world. But so what? At least there are standards, demands, incentives to do things, to care; to taste the succulent juices of achievement, success, failure—regardless how trivial the matters may be.

And how immature are the demands of the high school social atmosphere, anyway? (Granted, some are inane. But every metaphorical sword is double-edged. We just have to learn how to hold it from the middle.) Think about it: what makes for textbook popularity? Essentially, one must look good, smell good, have a personality, be athletic and hygienically sound. Please hold me while I shiver.

College, in contrast, is bereft of the spirit of competition. Unless one is an intercollegiate athlete or a student who’s paying his way, college is about fun, fun, fun and a midnight burrito. It is one long summer camp, only the counselor-relationships can be heterosexual. It is that four-year interval between the periods in which humiliation and the repo man, respectively, are at the gates.

In comparing my high school with UCSB, I have learned one essential lesson: humanity, when left unchecked, forgets to take a shower. Mere metaphor this is not. The aroma of my high school locker room was of cakes of deodorant, whereas in SB’s, it is that unmistakable hybrid of crap, chlorine and ball-sweat. When it comes to matters of dress, the discrepancy is tantamount. This can’t be coincidence.

Accusing me of eschewing the boxer brief of college for the tighty-whitey that is high school, would be incorrect.* I couldn’t be more alien to the culture of my peers. I’d rather listen to an aging frog clear its sinuses than to any singer born after 1965. I lived apart from the whole thing. It’s just that, the captivity of mandatory schooling allowed me to do some mandatory schooling of my own, abusing my subjects for their gruesome tastes—coerced advice, if you will. Call me an insidious sadist, but I found the experience a delight.

Where else but a secondary classroom can one be given a demonstration by police officers, volunteer to wear the “DUI goggles,” put them on and then point to an annoying bitch and say, “Whoah! Berit looks attractive”—as I had the pleasure to do on a very memorable occasion? (For the sake of anonymity, that’s her real name.) From a personal standpoint, my leaving high school was like an asexual leaving prison only to realize that he misses the forced joy, even if he’d do nothing to duplicate it. One’s opinions are his best company, to be sure, only sometimes a third is needed to make the situation complete.

But my point here is not to blame myself, for that will only detract from my criticisms of everything else. So I will stop now. I realize my whine ain’t no Chardonnay. I will stop. And I will admit that, with its own unique offerings and potentials for experience, Santa Barbarism is all right, in the condescending sense of the phrase, you know, as it is used by cool people as a bone thrown to those who are trying hard to fit in. Really, it’s not so bad out here.

If you can afford a puppy.

---

*I thought it only appropriate to include a dangling modifier in that sentence.
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