I discovered a portal to an alternate universe, and it goes by three blood-red rivalry letters: USC.
Exploring USC felt like a covert mission to both discover hidden rivalry secrets and to reveal a window into a university life I could have had but chose not to live.
A little context: My senior year of high school, I swore to myself that I would never visit another college campus for fun ever again. I grew unbearably weary of the perky, blond student tour guides who walked backward out of their flip-flops, the groups of parents asking about coed bathrooms while clutching maps and meal plan brochures, and, perhaps more than anything else, the overwhelming challenge of deciding which school I would best fit into.
Of course, I saw the necessity of visiting college campuses prior to making any final decisions. After all, only by visiting a school can one truly understand what it will be like to live there. It was only after I visited UCLA that I realized how much more I enjoyed busy, bustling, urban campus life as opposed to an isolated, rural college experience.
So, two and a half years after that stressful year of crucial decision-making, I finally feel as if I have the perspective to visit the infamous university on the “other side of town.”
I couldn’t help but be curious about it. From first year, I was indoctrinated into a world of blind anti-USC fury.
I remember going home my first winter break from college and cracking a USC joke to my older sister, who then crinkled her nose, scoffed and proclaimed the utter stupidity of college rivalries.
I, of course, grew defensive. What did she know about those scumbag, spoiled, good-for-nothing USC students anyway? She had never bled the blue and gold of a true Bruin!
Of course, this stance from an older sister can shake your foundational thinking about the world. Even when you tell her that she’ll never understand what such a rivalry is like, you ““ or maybe it’s just little, pushover me ““ can’t help but worry if she’s right.
Once my sister also floated the notion through my head that USC was actually a pretty OK school, I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly made it pretty OK.
Hence, it seemed far past due for a visit to UCLA’s favorite foe’s campus to truly discover the school I only knew as a rival and nothing more.
What struck me most about stepping onto USC’s campus was how separate it felt from the city around it.
There are no tall fences or barriers on the edges of the campus, but one step forward on the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Avenue made it completely clear that I wasn’t just in Los Angeles anymore: I was at the University of Southern California in all of its brick-building-and-fountain glory.
On a Saturday afternoon, the campus really didn’t feel all that different from UCLA. Backpacked students wearing their USC T-shirts slumped into the library while a giant charity event at USC’s recreation center, the Lyon Center, played loud music for a crowd.
A baseball game roared in the stadium just beyond their football field ““ something UCLA still does not have ““ and near the residence halls, students departed with iced coffees from Trojan Grounds, the equivalent of Bruin Café.
With crumpled map in hand, I explored the area only to find that, despite the similarities to UCLA, the whole campus felt completely counterintuitive.
First, there are no hills. Not even the slightest incline graces the campus.
After trekking up Bruin Walk, this flatness somehow made absolutely no sense to me.
Second, the campus’ academic buildings are not divided into logical North and South campuses like UCLA.
The Roski School of Fine Arts sits across the street from the Science & Engineering Library in the Seaver Science Center. Not that these differences matter a great deal, but after becoming so acclimated to the way our campus looks and feels, these differences felt disorienting.
As I walked near the residence halls, I first noticed the library and then noticed the clusters of girls in bikinis tanning on the lawn directly outside the library.
Sure, Janss Steps attracts sleeping sunbathers, but I thought bikinis were reserved for Sunset Canyon Recreation Center and, well, the pool.
Never before had the phrase “college bubble” seemed so applicable.
UCLA may seem a separate entity from the rest of Los Angeles, but UCLA’s fluid integration into Westwood Village and the campus’ intrinsically urban feel makes the bubble seem a little less thick.
Sure, we have our brick buildings and our gardens, but USC has Grecian-style courtyards, manicured flowered lawns and a flat landscape that creates a breathy, airy openness completely unlike UCLA. UCLA may be a city in and of itself, but USC is an isolated fantasy village.
In a way, I envied USC’s inescapable isolation from the outside community because it harbored a true sense of campus community.
However, on my trip home, I knew that at UCLA, I valued our proximity to Westwood and our vibrant city campus. Westwood certainly isn’t downtown, but it isn’t Disneyland either.
I’m sure I could have been happy at USC ““ just as a number of UCLA students could be happy there, believe it or not ““ but there is no place like home and the campus you’ve grown to love.
If you have a really funny “This one time at USC …” story, e-mail Cohn at jcohn@media.ucla.edu.