Willow Glen Resident
Letters & Opinions
Mother's Day came a little early this year
By Moryt Milo
In mid-April I took a road trip with my daughter down the coast. Our objective was simple: Scout out colleges from the very large, such as USC with 30,000 students, to the very small, such as Occidental with 1,800. We visited a number of UC campuses, and we spent a couple of days in Santa Monica, where her dad grew up.
It was an opportunity to show her where her grandparents lived. They passed away before she could remember them, but their home still sits between apartments and condos on 12th street off Wilshire Boulevard. Somehow it has survived. I showed her Santa Monica High School and Lincoln Junior High, where her dad went, and-- most importantly--the bluffs that rise above Santa Monica beach where her dad walked down each day after school with his long board to surf.
I only lived there for 3 1/2 years, but it was all good times. After all, I met my husband there. So I had places to show her, too. My old apartment in West Los Angeles, where I worked in Beverly Hills and where Ray and I were married.
She took it all in, snapping a steady stream of pictures with her camera phone. We were gone less than a week, but our time was uninterrupted. We had conversations about her aspirations, and about what was happening in her world now. The journey down South had me thinking about my own high school years.
My daughter and I compared generations. We laughed about some things, joked about the "old school" ways, but discovered many things hadn't really changed. The excitement of independence along with the uncertainty of the unknown was as true for her today as it was for me back then.
During our time together, we managed to squeeze in a few hours on the beach, at Santa Monica Pier, Rodeo Drive and even a couple of frozen lattes at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Between it all, we found ourselves continually reviewing and comparing notes about the colleges we saw, the campus cultures and the pros and cons of Southern versus Northern California.
After three days down South, my daughter decided her allergies would never survive the smog, and the traffic was ridiculous.
"Doesn't anyone work down here?" she asks, as we battled our way through freeway congestion. One day as we crept along she said, "L.A. is definitely over-rated."
Toward the end of the week we gladly headed back North with a stop in Santa Barbara. My daughter fell in love with UC-Santa Barbara, which surprised us both, because the mantra in our home had been "I'm going to college back East." That still may happen, but Santa Barbara has become the benchmark.
Then we uncovered some ugly truths about the UC application process. It appears the hardest schools to get into are the ones in our own state. The University of California campuses at the top require GPAs between 3.8 and 4.0 and SAT scores in the stratosphere. That doesn't bode well for us Californians. I can't imagine how a nonresident even gets in. Tuition doesn't come cheap either, weighing in at $24,000 per year and probably on the rise.
My daughter knows a number of people this year with 3.9 GPAs or higher and 2100 SATs who did not get into their first choice in California. This year has been painful for some of her friends, and she questioned all the effort they had put into their high school studies.
We didn't understand those college rejections until we saw how competitive and impacted many of the schools have become. We came home much more knowledgeable about what it takes to get into a UC school. And I am determined to make sure we both don't freak out during this process next year. I know there are plenty of good schools out there.
As for the time with my daughter, I wouldn't have traded the trip for anything. It brought us even closer. With Mother's Day just around the corner, I think it would be fair to say mine came a little early this year.
Moryt Milo is the editor of the Willow Glen Resident. She can be reached at 408.200.1051 or via email at mmilo@community-newspapers.com.
