San Luis Obispo, June, 2007

It's hard to believe that my youngest daughter will soon be a junior in high school. As someone who always plans her future while at the same time maximizing her present moment experiences, Amy already has begun researching where she wants to go to college. Among her group of friends, the idea of attending either Oxford or an Ivy League school has become quite glorified.

Selfishly, I don't want her moving that far away from home, regardless of the expense, but when factoring in the price of an education at Oxford, Princeton or Cornell versus one of the fine Universities of California or California State Universities, I am hoping she will come to the conclusion on her own that a west coast school would be best. Of course, many people need to live through four seasons to realize the great advantage of an endless summer where you can visit the snow in a couple of hours, when the desire for winter strikes. I know California schools have too much going for them to move away, but I need to convince her of this general truth by finding specific perfection.

To that end, we previously tooled around San Diego to see some schools down there, and since her older sister, Gina, went to UCLA, she has also seen that fine university first hand too. The first weekend in June, we headed north to investigate Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Once we make it past the San Fernando Valley, the drive up the 101 opens up into a world of rolling hills, vineyards and occasional glimpses of the coastline. If you've seen the quirky movie "Sideways," then you've seen the area. We've visited San Luis Obispo several times before, and we've always enjoy the views on the drive up, although Amy, as a teenager who had been out late at the band banquet the night before, slept through much of the beautiful scenery.

We arrived in San Luis Obispo about noon, and the Quality Suites we had reserved allowed us to check-in early.

After freshening up from the four hour drive, we headed over to Cal Poly to get our first look at the campus. Having been in the area previously and read about it on line, we weren't surprised to find a beautiful setting for the sprawling campus of diverse buildings. We parked by a gorgeous new performing arts theater and did our best to follow the map we had printed before leaving home to the Graphic Arts Building, which is also the home of the Journalism Department.

Right now, journalism leads the field of possible majors. Working as an editor of her high school newspaper this year has reinforced this desire developed working on the school paper in middle school and taking journalism as a freshman in high school. I've always been a frustrated writer, so I definitely understand her desire.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has what is probably the premier Journalism Department among the California State Universities. The department is headed by a Pullitzer Prize winning journalist who spent 25 years in the trenches of the L.A. Times, and they put out a daily newspaper of high quality. Further, they have their own printing press on campus, so it is, in essence, a small version of a great metropolitan newspaper. Amy was impressed.

In addition to the newspaper, Cal Poly also has a radio station and a television station, so students have the opportunity to pursue journalism in these fields, too.

So, we have a beautiful setting and the perfect academic environment for her goals, so what else could she want? Well, of course we all want her to have friendly and nice fellow students. When we were trying to find the Liberal Arts building on our map, two male students stopped to help us out. The students working at the information desk and other areas all seemed very friendly, too. When I forced Amy to stand in front of the Cal Poly sign for a photo, cars driving by shouted things like "Go Mustangs" and "Yay, Cal Poly," apparently encouraging her to come there. So, as far as I can tell, the school had everything, but what about the nearby towns?

San Luis Obispo, to some extent, reminds me of how Orange County and Los Angeles County felt when I was a child. It is a town of about 50,000 people, and the downtown area bustles with shoppers and diners, but somehow it lacks that hectic feel to which those of us further south have become accustomed. The streets aren't deserted, but there aren't traffic jams, either, and finding a parking space is easy, with the first hour free and 75 cents per hour in the city sponsored lots.