Baby faces

This week started off a new quarter at UCLA for me, and while I love learning I’m a teensy bit bitter about the encroachment into my personal time.  Between trying to finish my revision, work, and run a photo business, I don’t need the extra homework.  Okay, I’m a lot bitter.  I was on campus today and I saw a girl who looked super young and it got me all contemplative.  The young-looking people are everywhere.  Taking over the world, I tell you.

Now, I know I’m not that much older than most of my fellow students, but I feel older.  And when I see a campus full of baby-faces, it makes me wonder why there is such a difference.  I feel like when I first set out to college I definitely looked younger than I do now, but I didn’t look like jail-bait.  My question is whether this stems from the academic environment or the temperament of the students.

At Emerson everyone was an artist, or at least they regarded themselves as such, and they all looked like real people.  Was this because of the self-inflicted tortured-artist mentality so many of the Emersonians had?  Did the heavy burden of the human condition weigh us down mentally and physically?  Were we scrubbed of our fresh-faced enthusiasm by the raw winds of the city and its many rejections?

Many students at UCLA are from California and I wonder if the more relaxed lifestyle so often equated with SoCal actually makes a physical difference in its residents.  Does less stress mean more resilience?  Does a student population with fewer art students mean less worry about the reality of existence?  Or do they just have better face creams?

If it’s the face cream, please tell me where I can get some.

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