Golden leaves falling from the trees and the soft setting sun announces the end of this day and this fall semester.
And the end of my time at the University of La Verne.
Joe Cocker sings “N’oubliez jamais” (never forget) out of my earplugs. Somehow this oldie matches my mood and situation. Joe can be sure, I never will.
After the Interterm semester, I leave the University of La Verne with tear-filled eyes, because I know how much I will miss the small sunny campus in the heart of nowhere, where every student has a smile on his face.
It seems like yesterday that I checked in at the Oaks at 1 p.m. after a 24-hour odyssey from Frankfurt, Germany to La Verne, Calif.
As I arrived one week before the beginning of the semester, the whole campus was empty, and I explored it on my own.
To the few students that were already back from the break, I must have looked like a retard, walking around with an oversized smile on my face, gazing at every palm, every car and every sports place.
La Verne is more than I expected.
I realized this when I finally had my first class, “Newspaper Production,” the Campus Times course.
The journalism lab filled with 14 “e-Mac” computers and the national awards on the walls announced excellence in quality and professionalism.
And all my classes certified this impression.
Coming along with no classes of more than 20 people, the teachers took the time for individual paper and article evaluation and showed me my strengths and weaknesses.
I feel like I made the right decision back in Germany, when I was searching for a place to study abroad in California. My application and admission process had finally brought me down to a 50-50 decision: ULV vs. San Francisco State University.
I went with the smaller campus and the better weather.
I chose La Verne, but my best friend went to SFSU.
Last week, he visited me and the Leopard fever caught him too.
Whenever we talk now, he keeps gasping about the small and familiar campus atmosphere and especially, “the smiling people.”
Which is true. Whenever I walk down the streets of the campus, all the people walking by have a smile on their faces.
As I stop and talk to those smiling students about their university, they often complain about the city and area of La Verne, where “nothing’s going on.”
They have a point.
You might not be at Harvard or Stanford, with their enormous reputations.
You might not be at the heart of the city like UCLA, throwing parties like at UC San Diego or UC Santa Barbara.
But you found a family here in the small community of La Verne.
You are at a place where teachers care about you, as you are not just one student out of 700 in their class. You are more than a number.
There has got to be a reason for all those smiles.
Within only one semester, this university turned a critical cold German into a proud Leopard. I went to the sports events, cheered and cried with the Leopard athletes and sometimes found it hard to report critically about “my university.”
When I go back to Germany after the Interterm, I will take a great journalistic education, only good memories, and the feeling of having made a lot of new friends with me.
I had a great time at the University of La Verne and made a lot of friends.
To all of them: I will miss and never forget you. The same goes to the whole campus with you proud smiling Leopard souls.
“N’oubliez jamais.”
Max Zänker, an international student, is a staff writer for the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at zaenkerm@bits-iserlohn.de.
