I’m supposed to love this campus. This is a chance to revisit all the spots I’ve frequented — third floor Geisel, where I stared at the mountains when I first arrived in San Diego, awed by the view after a lifetime in the flat Midwest. Or the Snake Path, but everyone loves the Snake Path. Plus, I have to think practically. These places don’t have outlets.
That table in the corner outside Price Center, near the Loft. I park myself there between classes because it’s close to an outlet. If it’s already taken, I glare as if this stranger has stolen what’s mine. It’s especially insulting if they’re not even charging their laptop. They could be anywhere else, no issue; I’m the one who needs this. It would be funny to put my radio there, define my space, my presence marked even when I take too long in line for my chocolate croissant and now someone else has claimed the table. I don’t know if I could realistically put a radio there, though; Price Center is busy, and UCSD would probably rather that I didn’t scare prospective students off with my artistic ventures.
Other places: the conference rooms where the literary magazine has met or held socials. My old dorm in Warren. The benches I’ve cried on, the tables and the parking lots where I’ve met up with friends and dates.
Brainstorming the content of my audio project, I’m thinking of what I would tell someone — a student considering attending this university, or my past self. I’m graduating in June, so I should have advice. Even with my naturally snarky attitude, I wouldn’t want to say, don’t go here, this place will kill your soul, or anything similarly edgy. All I can say is that I’m leaving college with more questions than I arrived with. Maybe that’s okay. My life was so small at eighteen, so limited that I didn’t even see the boundaries. Post-college adulthood is a gaping void. What do I want to fill it with? How do I translate four years into one project, all these questions into a piece of writing?
Reminiscing on places – photos I took my first year (the Snake Path and a blooming tree outside my old dorms):
Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM 
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