preacher lou to the rescue

this is a letter i just sent to a fourth cousin i just found out about. she's 20 and wants to move to san diego. she has grown up in fresno. she's on bio-dad's side, so she's probably pretty cool. her mom, my third cousin seems very cool. i wrote this to her this morning. she had two questions for me. 1.did you like san diego 2.do you like southern california or northern california better, and why

i gave her 1200 words in answer to those two questions. i'm not sure if i'm just chatty or kind of a pain in the ass.
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so, you're thinking about san diego state. i laugh when i think of san diego state. i guess because i had a really really good time there. i'm not an academic though. i'm a social girl, though not on the scale of sororities. When I was there, sorority girls were lame – requirements for a certain thigh circumference is not a lie. i was social in that i made a lot of great friends, some from no cal, some from so cal...and i was way more interested in partying than school. i majored in fine art with a focus in painting. my best friend was a painter too and since our teacher never made us attend class, since it wasn't really a class, more like just a place to paint and sometimes get comments, we didn't go. instead we would go to the completely 24hour open studio and paint in the night. i enjoyed this greatly, but i can't say i learned much about painting. on the other hand, i don't think painting can be taught. this might be a lesson about getting out of something what you put into it.

i also studied literature. this did require attending class, but books are great, so that wasn't too much of a pain. i also had a fantastic teacher. well, more than one. i learned more from my english and lit teachers than anyone else. in fact, i learned stuff from them i still use. life stuff. I thought I was a hot writer until I got there and realized that I was a hot writer in a small town, not in a big one. That was a shock! My hometown had a population of 4500. My school had a population of 45,000. I’m laughing now at my naivete. Anyway, I learned very valuable things in the English and lit departments.

i lived in the dorms my first year (i turned 18 there) and the next two years off campus, although very near as i did not drive. in fact i just learned to drive this month, but that's another story. the dorms are great for 18 year olds, but older people there were weird. off campus is great fun. i lived in a house with 8 other people. it was a five-bedroom. it's true what you imagine. we all lived there with our boyfriends. we all smoked cigarettes too. and in the house. gag. it was ok though at age 20. somehow. my second year of school my parents couldn't afford to send me anymore, so i had to work full time and pay for it. that sucked. BAD. i worked from 6am to noon and then school from noon to 10pm. it killed me. i worked on campus at the student-run health food store. my friends would be up drinking wine until 3am and i couldn't join them because my alarm went off at 5. i don't recommend working and going to school if you can help it. i passed out in class all the time because i wasn't getting enough sleep. back then the school had a sleeping room where kids would just go and pass out on sofas and sleep in between classes. i did this daily. It depends ultimately how much school means to you though. One of my roommates graduated with a double major, working full time the whole time, and went on to be a professor of sociology at uc riverside. He took it in stride, but he wanted to be an academic, not an artist, so there ya go.

anyway, i quit after three years because i just couldn't take it. also, i was ready for san francisco. san diego doesn't really have anything cool happening in it. there are no bitchen art shows with forward-thinking genre-leading art. there are no cool arty bars. only the kind that get morons drunk. i assume you don't mind me being frank.

san diego? my rating is low, but i had a raging good time there for three years. that's just all i had. not an especially good education, but an adequate one. i'm pretty sure it really only matters how smart you are, not how great your schooling is, unless you are studying to be a lawyer, or a doctor or an academic...that determines how far you go in life. also, don't be an asshole. people who are jerks don't get far. they spin their wheels and wonder why. This is a problem I see among peers at my age now. social intelligence is also very important. a pretty smile can get you very far as long as you're genuine. i don't mean to say school isn't important. i am so deeply thankful that i went. you should absolutely go. you'll feel like a dummy out in the world if you don't know certain things. to be simple about it: you won't get in with smart people if you aren't learned and that is accomplished quicker in school than on your own. these things can be picked up with minimal effort at san diego state in three years or more. the rest will be up to you.

i hope i don't sound like a preacher. you asked my opinion and i'm writing a tome! i hope your family doesn't now regret giving me your email address. i used to talk about all this stuff with grady and he agreed, but his life choices are a totally different story!

northern california is way way more me than so cal. northern california is very special. it's very liberal in differing degrees depending on where you live. the east bay has mean hippies in it who want to control everyone's world-wasting bad manners with lots of laws and mean looks if you don't abide. san francisco is somewhat heartless. people don't care about property for the most part, it depends what neighborhood you're in. of course i loved it there for 16 years. so many good times were had. more than i ever could have ever dreamed of. but that came from really putting myself out there. constantly searching out adventure and having good cohorts to accompany me. i accomplished things in san francisco that would normally be unobtainable anywhere else. like editing a real live magazine (without a degree. a good smile and a good adventure story got me the job), meeting rock stars all the time, seeing endless art and being around brilliant people. the south bay is filled with dull, copycat, suburban people who tend to be computer nerds, marin county is filled with hippies who still take acid. they seem to be the kindest, most tolerant and most educated, but only in the northern part of marin, where i live now that i'm over 35 and seem to be following a human path set a long time ago. southern marin is filled with rich people who don't leave the house without looking like perfection according to vogue magazine. but at least they're democrats.

southern california is why jokes are made about california. i don't have anything good to say about it. except the weather is good. it's not a pretty place, at least not compared to here. i met some great folks there, for sure and some were from there. good people can always be found, but fun and cool and daring things to do cannot always be found. so cal is too vast and people are too concerned with looking like everyone else. mostly. i still have some dear friends down there who are the greatest ever.

I will stop this craziness now. i am unable to write short emails. i hope that's ok! i hope i don't sound like a jerk!