en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:49:30 GMT 15 By Katie Ingwersen

I was suspended over the country, in the middle of the air, in the middle of my life. It was “severe clear,” so clear I could see the ground all the way across the country — farms, subdivisions with ball fields and swimming pools, enormous mountains still covered with snow. For me, flying to California was something special and rare. I was on my way to the ASNE Institute in Berkeley. I had decided to spend the five hours between Dulles and Oakland reading Joan Didion’s memoir "Where I Was From." As I read Didion’s reflections about her home state and her family, and her eventual decision to leave California, I began to think about my own family, the people I would meet at the institute, and other things. (It might have been clear outside the plane, but in my own muddled brain, things remained as murky as ever.) In my own family, California was like forbidden fruit. I clearly remember my mother telling my college counselor at my Illinois high school that I could look at schools in any state “except California.” I complied. My younger sister took the statement as a challenge and applied to colleges only in California. She ended up graduating from Occidental College in Los Angeles. (Another sister split the difference and went to school in Colorado.) I think my mother’s fear was that we would fall in love with California and would never move back. In my sister’s case, that has proven true. She married a man who had grown up in California, and has lived in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. I read a little more and found a section on Didion’s teenage years. She wrote, “I dreamed of escaping to Bennington.” She had thought she “would prepare [herself] for a life in the theater by sitting in a tree in a leotard, and listening to Francis Fergusson explain the difference between drama and melodrama.” But she ended up attending college in Berkeley and living in California for many years. After I arrived at the ASNE Institute, I stopped reading and started talking to people. (We were supposed to practice interviewing skills, after all.) I decided to focus on teachers who had gone to college in California, in part because I still think about how far away my sister seems to live (even though we talk on the phone and email constantly), and in part for my own selfish reason: my older daughter will be applying to colleges next year and now I am the mother. I met several graduates of California colleges who had chosen to live in the state. My interest was further piqued when I heard Stephen R. Proctor of the San Francisco Chronicle say that he was adding one full-time reporter to cover the UC-Berkeley, and another to cover Stanford. As it happened, there were two teachers at the Institute who had attended these very schools. According to Stanford University’s Web site, only 62 percent of its undergraduates come from outside of California. Yoni Fine, originally from the New York suburbs, is one. Fine said his parents encouraged him to look at Stanford, his father’s alma mater, because they recognized he was more “low key and laid back” than his older brothers, who had gone to school on the East Coast. Fine says he found Stanford to be “a watered down version of California, if Santa Cruz and Berkeley are the ‘real thing’.” Fine, who currently lives in Berkeley with his wife, a native of Northern California, believes his parents could have predicted that he would end up living in the state. Fine misses his family and the seasons most. He believes he “romanticizes” living in the East when he gets homesick, and forgets about things like “having to wear scarves and gloves to go out, then having to take off [one glove] to get your key out and unlock the door.” As for California, Fine most appreciates the political climate, the ethnic diversity, the produce, and the burritos. He recognizes that he may have to move out of the area to buy a house, but hopes not to move farther than Sacramento. The admissions brochure from UC Berkeley states that even fewer students than Stanford come from other states; fully 89 percent of undergraduates are California residents. Tracy Payne, an Institute participant and native of San Jose, chose to attend UC Berkeley because of its academic caliber and the in-state tuition. She said she also sought a school with a big football program because she believes it builds school culture and camaraderie among students. I met participants from other California universities as well. Kamala Kavati, who has lived in California since her family moved from Audrha, in South India, chose to attend California State at Fullerton because she needed to work to put herself through college. She enjoys living and teaching in her suburban Los Angles community, but is concerned that the area is becoming overly congested. Jan Goodspeed says she stayed in Santa Cruz to attend college for similar financial reasons. As I got to know these teachers, who will stay in California (at least for the next school year) to teach kids to write, to respect the First Amendment, to design pages, and to podcast, I am impressed by their dedication and willingness to stay in an increasingly expensive area to teach these kids, my optimism is reaffirmed. When I get back on the plane tomorrow, I may finish Joan Didion’s book, or I may choose to read something else. When I get home, my daughter will be gone, having taken a first step toward independence by traveling with her high school German class to Austria for three weeks. Things will get back to “normal,” and I will continue to have to make decisions I am not ready to make. But, in my role as journalism teacher at least, I will have more confidence, bolstered by the support of new friends, friends I met in California. ]]> Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:38:00 GMT