Spring break at school

Strolling around the grounds of UCLA

April 28, 2000
Web posted at: 10:49 a.m. EDT (1449 GMT)

In this story: Day 1: Choose shoes carefully Day 2: The cheap seats Day 3: Surf's up! Day 4: The school of hard knocks Day 5: What hats these cat wear RELATED STORY, SITES

By Jack Hamann
CNN NewsStand Correspondent

(CNN) -- Spring break at the beach? Forget about it! This year my wife and I joined thousands of other American families on a rite of passage: touring as many colleges as possible during a week away from school. We were bound for California, trying to help our daughter Lauren, a high school junior, select a college while simultaneously turning a procession of tedious tours into a travel adventure to remember.

Day 1: Choose shoes carefully

It's one of the biggest pains of packing for travel: shoes.

Comfortable walking shoes? Check. Sandals for the inevitable detours to warm California beaches? Check. But who knew I'd need my running shoes?

When the weather is nice, some Stanford professors are smart enough to hold their lectures outside

We arrived at the Seattle-Tacoma airport at 5:30 a.m., surprised to see a mob of fellow travelers at the Alaska Airlines counter. Our 6:30 a.m. flight to San Jose had been abruptly and mysteriously canceled, leaving more than 100 of us scrambling for flights to the Bay Area. All the day's seats to San Jose were already taken, and Oakland had no openings until late in the day. We had only one choice: a flight leaving in 25 minutes for San Francisco.

Lauren and my wife, Leslie, ran for the gate. I ran to park the car, then ran to catch the parking lot shuttle, then ran to the crowded security line, then ran down a packed terminal to gate D-2, where the agent was telling Leslie and Lauren, "Sorry, time's up!"

Just then, Lauren shouted, "Here he comes!" and there I came, a sweaty out-of-breath father making an absolute scene in front of countless strangers -- just the sight every 16-year-old girl dreads. Lucky for her, the last three seats on the plane were rows and rows apart.

If our sprint through the airport was a pounding headache, our visit to Stanford University was a neck massage. The oak-dotted campus, with its low-slung, tile-roofed and rambling adobe buildings, Spanish-style courtyards and fine-trimmed lawns, could be a giant retirement community. The first thing we noticed was ... the silence. Cars are banned from much of campus, so Stanford's quads are jammed with an estimated 15,000 bicycles (serving its 14,000 students, plus faculty.) Of course, the folks here are, on average, quite a bit younger than those at most retirement communities -- though the average IQ is so high that more than a few could be cashing in their stock options by the time they're 30.

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Jen Taylor was our tour guide. A sophomore from the Bay Area, she helps offset Stanford's $33,000 annual tuition/room/board bill by giving prospective students a whirlwind walk around campus. Jen earns more than $30,000 a year in grants and scholarships, much of it from the Army's Reserve Officer Training Corps. She came to Stanford thinking she might study astro-engineering (the future-astronaut major). Now she's an economics major, eyeing law school. Next year? Maybe she'll decide to be a heart surgeon. There's still time, Jen.

Day 2: The cheap seats

All tour and no play? No way. Because it's springtime, and because the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams were both playing home games, we jumped at the chance to enjoy a few hours at the ballpark.

When we go to any Major League game, we always head for the cheap seats. The fans aren't fancy there: They take off their shirts, paint their faces and let opposing outfielders know what they think of their million-dollar salaries and magazine-model girlfriends. There's no better view of a towering home run than watching it leave the bat 400 feet away and head right for the drunken fans two rows behind you.

The night before hitting Berkeley, we visited the Oakland Athletics, who were hosting the Cleveland Indians. With our $5.50 beers, $4.75 Saag's Portuguese sausages and $4.50 garlic fries, we sat in our $5 bench seats and watched Oakland stagger against a clearly superior team. The game dragged on for almost four hours, but the show where we were sitting, filled with heckling fans, was more entertaining than most.

The winner! The Cheap Ticket Arches

Then we were on to Berkeley. Our tour guide was senior Paul Katz, a business major who wants to work for an Internet company before he applies to law school. As we passed the chancellor's office, he helpfully pointed out that "it's a great place to start, if you want to protest something" - a reference to Vietnam War protests three decades earlier.

Four hours of hiking the Berkeley hills left us tired, but there was unfinished business in San Francisco. This was opening day for Pacific Bell Park, the Giant's brand-new baseball stadium. The game sold out months ago, but we had read that cheap seats somehow were still available.

To our delight, we found four choice where-to-go-without-a-ticket locations. Third runner-up was an asphalt parking lot on a nearby pier, where a giant-screen TV broadcast the game to folks waiting for a post-game Chris Isaak concert. Second runner-up was a half-dozen shaded benches beyond centerfield, where families listened on the radio and heard the roar of the crowd nearby. First runner-up was China Basin, a slip of San Francisco Bay where folks in small boats packed the water, hoping to catch any home-run balls that might clear the rightfield fence.

But the winner was a 50-foot walkway under the curved arches of rightfield. In a fit of amazing common sense, the park's designers gave the citizens of San Francisco a place where 100 or so folks can stand in the shade and watch the game ... for free. Since almost every seat for every game this season is already sold out, the arches may be the best bargain in town.

Day 3: Surf's up!

How ya gonna keep 'em in the library once they've seen the beach, especially someone like our daughter, a 16-year-old who sometimes complains about Seattle's gray skies?

Our first campus tour today brought us to California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, a place where guys are tan, girls wear shorts and everyone sports killer sunglasses. Cal Poly has a water ski club, a roller hockey club and a team entered in the world championships of Ultimate Frisbee. The beaches are only a few minutes away.

San Luis Obispo: Should I study organic chemistry, or go the beach?

Our guide was Sam Aborne, a junior from Anaheim who thought he wanted to study civil engineering when he entered college, but has now switched to industrial engineering. The school nurtures creative thinkers and free spirits, said Sam, who pointed out an entire building dedicated to designing and building a student float for the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. A huge effort is put into competitions to design solar-powered and human-powered vehicles. The school's most famous graduate -- he majored in architecture -- is Weird Al Yankovic.

Two hours down the road, we hit what we figured would be the scariest part of our trip. What if Lauren fell in love with UCSB?

We went to college in the early 1970s, a time when the University of California at Santa Barbara was the school for partying. In 1970, students defied local police and made one of the strands clothing-optional. That same year, students defied United States policy in Vietnam and burned to the ground a branch of the Bank of America. In a town that that Ronald Reagan and countless wealthy CEOs called home, the university seemed like an asylum run by the inmates.

Thirty years later, Bank of America ATMs dot the campus. A psychology student with whom we talked had never heard about nude beaches or burning banks. We heard plenty about how parties are now "under control."

Day 4: The school of hard knocks

If life is a highway, today was a pothole.

We've been making the tours during the daytime, while Lauren's spent her evenings cramming in high school assignments. Equations demand to be solved. Hemingway and Melville beg for comparative analysis.

At 8 this morning, we had to analyze this: All of Lauren's hard work for high school was gone -- stolen.

During the night, someone broke out the rear window of our rental car. They didn't take our jackets. They didn't take our CDs. They only took Lauren's oversized blue backpack, crammed full of textbooks, notebooks, a calculator, a tape recorder and her wallet.

We searched every overgrown bush. We pawed through every overstuffed Dumpster. In the end, we filled out forms for La Quinta Inn, the Ventura Police Department, Hertz Rent A Car and American Express. The backpack -- and homework -- were history.

We needed a lift, and UCLA came to the rescue.

Royce Hall is UCLA's signature landmark

The fifth college on our trek holds special importance. For 16 years, Lauren has lived in a household where, each November, her dad drags out his ragged UCLA sweatshirt and screams at the TV as his beloved Bruins face Southern Cal's hated Trojans football team. Her dad (UCLA class of '76) and mom (UCLA class of '77) have left no doubt that it's one of America's Finest Universities.

Tour guide Nina Agarwal did nothing to contradict Lauren's parents. A senior, Nina grabbed everyone's attention by pointing out that more high school seniors (37,5000) apply to UCLA than to any other school in America. Each year's incoming 5,000 freshmen join a campus of 35,000 undergrads and graduate students. Nina listed dozens of famous graduates and Nobel winners and Pulitzer honorees, and pointed to buildings housing world-class medical and scientific research.

Lauren was clearly impressed. UCLA's lush campus is hard to resist, and its student body is more lively and diverse than most.

By 5 p.m., we retreated to a sidewalk cafe in Westwood, just south of campus. I felt the tiny shards of glass from the morning's broken window still embedded in my fingers and wondered about the reaction of the unlucky burglar who dragged a heavy pack to his hideaway, only to find it full of dense, difficult textbooks and the hard work of a teen-age girl he'll never meet.

Unless, of course, he studies those books and is admitted to UCLA someday ...

Day 5: What hats these cat wear

The final stop on our five-day fling through California colleges is the University of California at San Diego. The campus anchors the north end of La Jolla, longtime home of the late, great Theodor Geisel -- Dr. Seuss.

The good doctor has been dead almost a decade, but UCSD's Geisel Library stands as a tribute to the man who put a hat on a cat. In 1995, Theodor's widow, Audrey, donated the dollars to build what is easily the most compelling structure we saw during our tour of six universities. Rising from a plateau, with a soaring view of northern San Diego County and the Pacific Ocean, the library looks like it was lifted from a drawing in one of Seuss' books. On closer inspection, much of the building is actually underground, with a ring of five jagged pyramid-shaped windows rising from the rocks, each serving as a skylight to the rooms below.

The Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Library at UC San Diego

There is a lot more to like in this La Jolla hideaway. Much of the campus is hidden in a eucalyptus forest, with killer views of some of San Diego's best surfing beaches below. Like many top universities, UCSD has been spending money to compete for new students by improving its dorms, food and recreation centers. A mammoth new recreation and athletic complex features 200,000 square feet of indoor courts, weight rooms and gyms. The Price Center is a collection of cafes, theaters and sunny performance spaces smack in the middle of campus. Some of the dorms look like quiet retreats -- on the outside, anyway.

We wrapped up our whirlwind week on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. On a day when the sky was blue and the ocean bluer, dozens of San Diegans had ditched school or work to literally throw themselves to the wind. Just west of the UCSD campus, the City of San Diego maintains a park for paragliding and hang gliding. One glider told us we had arrived during absolute ideal conditions, and tried to talk me into paying for a tandem flight.

It was tempting, but how could I justify paying $125 for a few moments aloft when we'll soon be hit with huge tuition bills? No, I couldn't be the Grinch that Stole College.

Our week-long expedition was an eye-opener for Lauren. Colleges that look good on the map look a lot different when you look students in the eye. As it turns out, the California sun doesn't shine every single day, and the fog of applying for college won't lift for at least another year.

In any event, the trip was much more than an endless string of walk-and-talk tours. It was a bona fide adventure, one that will ease the pain of writing those tuition checks in the years to come.

Maybe.

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