A.P.&M
AP & M. That’s what I came here for. When I first stepped on campus I was amazed by the sheer beauty of the campus. The green and the trees melding with the gray and concrete. The forest and the eucalyptus seemed to overtake the buildings. Or the hardened concrete structures seemed to rise out of the tree stems. I couldn’t wrap my around this concept, I had never encountered anything like this before but the interplay worked.
Applied Physics and Mathematics is what sold me on this place. Set amongst a verdant, green lawn was a massive monolith of a building, sheaths of aggregate and boughs of concrete overhanging window perches, the home of burrowed professors. It was amazing. Here was this building that said, ‘I came, I saw, I concerned. Green lawn and forest - you are no match for me.’
It was A.P. & M. that brought me to UCSD.
I come back 20 years later and it’s completely different. There is a towering vine above where I used to live. I lived in Pepper Canyon, where brown wooden beams and squares were dispersed like scattered, lost seedlings among the canyon edges. That’s how I felt. Almost (but not) forgotten and relegated to the far edge of campus. The roots of social life not spreading out this far. Twas not til spring season that life bloomed and beings came to visit me. Like wandering deer the flock had finally made their way over after much cajoling from me.
Unfortunately, the master of the house had taken away all his electrical gadgets away to his home for the weekend, so I had nothing to entertain with. Alas, I had an empty nest and nothing to show after constant calls of wooing and whistling. The deer were not amused. ‘We came, we saw and now we can say we’ve finally been.’ Not much to see, with the empty burrow hollowed out of accouterments. But at least they had poked their noses around! And then like bemused but only slightly interested deer they all trekked back up the hill to their homes.
The concrete vine now snaked away over my home and around the canyon. Or what was left of it. Pepper Canyon, once at the cleft of civilization, had become the center of campus life. This line with its moving trolley hovered above the canyon, transformed into the center of campus. And now as I stepped off the trolley from downtown Pepper Canyon had a direct line into the city. Simply unrecognizable. What used to be a quiet, enjoyable, reflective walk home at night now changed into a busy, hip thoroughfare populated with edgy buildings and bristling with an energy of people zipping around on motorized scooters.
Was this the 2020’s I stepped into? It’s surely what I recalled when, in the past, I trudged up these hills, thinking, ‘One day, in the future, we will have motorized scooters to get around. In the meantime, we frolick and fro and dart with the bunnies who greet us after we step out of class at night.’
And now to today. What happened to my little tree house?
Elevated above the canyon floor, I was like a bird and it nearly disappeared underneath the shadow of this new vein of life connecting UCSD with the rest of the world. It’s a much different experience being back. I most definitely appreciate the time I had there. I formed great friendships and fellowship. It’s odd now. Still plenty of young people wandering around. And I can still blend in with my backpack here. But most of these kids weren’t even born when I was in college and now almost every single person I went to college with has children of their own.
Odd indeed. But that’s the tree of life and I hope to keep adding to this family.
Post Script:
The student body had grown so much that there were now two rings around campus - an inner loop and an outer loop. Where once there was only a clockwise loop and a counter-clockwise loop, the campus had grown so much that to effectively shuttle all the nascent cells around the body two new lines had to ring around the body. This too was a surreal experience.
I ran across the street to catch the bus as it was pulling away from the sidewalk. Like in years past, the bus stopped mid street to let me on. (Good luck students in the future, out in the savage world, you’ll be left behind stuck in your tracks in the dust, waiting to ponder why the driver didn’t stop for you).
I hopped onto the bus mid street and said thank you, and boarded. Immediately I got on and was assaulted with… a glare of nothingness? Everyone was sitting down, looking at their phones, the blue gare reflecting off their blue masks. Odd. No one was speaking. Everyone was sitting, so still. In my day no one sat. Everyone jostled together like sardines in a tin can, sweaty sausages rolled together, Pirouline wafers stacked on top of one another.
The ride was pleasant. It was quiet. Everyone took their place and had a seat. The student driver gripped his hand at 10 and 2 and looked up at the mirror, making sure everyone was settled down in the back before he left. Then he slowly started to accelerate. That hadn’t changed - good to see they were still training the drivers the right way. We proceeded into the dark of night, this part of campus under construction. What once was a parking lot arose the frame of a new 20-story structure. So long memories. Hello old new campus.