San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State, UC Berkeley

My friends and I are planning a trip to San Francisco for Winter break, which is what I really need. I have an obsession with moving there and going to San Francisco State, they have a really good Creative Writing Program.

As a senior in high school I was quite indecisive about what university I wanted to go. Here's a few schools I thought I wanted go to: UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, USC, Chapman, Loyola Marymount, Westmont, and Cal State Long Beach. I like how I wanted to go to two rivalry schools, UCLA and USC, and I wanted to go to two different religious schools, the Catholic University Loyola Marymount, and the Christian University Westmont. I honestly think all these schools are amazing and back then I wanted to go to all of them, then I realized I didn't want to go to any of them.  



This bridge was in one of the student blog pictures

Earlier Spring my best friend, Alexia and I decided we needed to go visit some college campuses. Alexia was so committed to UC Santa Cruz and on one of our Starbucks study sessions, she told me how obsessed she was with this school. She showed me a blog regarding UC Santa Cruz students and their student life. I could see it was a far walk to classes and dorms and the scenery was similar to Twilight. Literally, there was a picture of the campus and it was surrounded by thick redwood trees. We decided that would be one of the schools we would visit.  Our friend Sydney, went to CSU Monterey Bay so she let us stay a night at her dorm and tagged along on our college tour. We also told our other friends, Amy, who went to San Francisco State, and Kelsey, who went to UC Berkeley, if they could give us a tour of their schools.  



Alexia and Syd trying to figure out where we were

We left on Thursday, April 11th after school and stayed at Sydney's that night. The next day we got a brief tour of CSU Monterrey Bay and left to UC Santa Cruz. It looked exactly like the pictures from the student blogs, so green and filled with beautiful redwood trees. We didn't personally know anyone at UCSC, so we got a map and tried to figure it out on our own. We found the dorms, walked in a few classrooms, we went to the bookstore, and we even followed a school that was getting a tour by a UCSC student. (We had to stop because, we got the feeling they were on to us)  Despite, the huge trees Santa Cruz really did remind me of Santa Barbara because it was near the ocean and near their downtown. After we spent the rest of the day in downtown Santa Cruz listening to talented musicians playing on the streets, shopping, and eating.

Amy, Syd, and Alexia @ SF State

The next day we went to visit, Amy at San Francisco State. It was colder than I expected there. She gave us a tour around her school showing us, her dorm, the library, where her classes were. What I liked about this school at first was that it was located more on the outskirts of SF. Walking around the campus, I felt like I was comfortable there being there and I started really seeing myself going here. It was later that I found out I could major in Creative Writing and the music scene up there was my type of genre. After, we went into the city to get lunch at a sandwich shop called, Ike's Place.(http://ilikeikesplace.com/) It was amazing! We also got Boba sometime later. At night we left for Berkeley....

the Campanile

Alexia, Kelsey, and I

We arrived at Kelsey's dorm and got settled in. We met her roommates.  This campus was in the middle of the city, surrounded by many buildings. This was indeed different from UCSC and SFSU. We went for a walk that night and I could see many students dressed up for parties at fraternities. It was quite a scene. I could see there was a police car outside of a Frat house that echoed a loud fire alarm. People left in panic. We decided to get food at their school Café, after that show. The next morning we got up and went to the Berkeley tower, the Campanile. It was such a breath-taking view; We could see the whole city as well as San Francisco from across the bridge.
 That day we had to make our way back to Santa Barbara, but we decided to do something really quick before we left. Go to the Golden Gate Bridge...

What I learned from that experience is that if your ever unsure about something, find a way to the answer. Your not going to figure out what you want by sitting and waiting for someone to decide it for you. You must adventure off and figure it out on your own.

- KIKI REYES