First, I was in High School. And it was okay. And then I went to College, and it was good. I attended a small New England Liberal Arts School, Wesleyan University (Wes), to be specific, and majored in the hard sciences (chemistry, to be specific). Then I decided to screw all that, and ran off to the University of Southern California (USC), where I decided to major in froofy artsy things (Cinema-Television, to be specific).

It did not take me long to realize that I was playing a whole new ball game out here.

While USC isn't a state school, it's often mistaken for one. Wesleyan was small, liberal, and isolated. USC is large, indeterminately political, and in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.

Within 24 hours, I realized that there were a lot of differences. And about a split second after that, I realized that Fish might well pay extra for such an exclusive scoop. [ed. Note- In fact, I offered to double his per-word salary.] So, here they are…

The Top Ten Ways In Which USC Is Not Wesleyan

10. Doheny library building closed for "seismic retrofitting".

This doesn't really require any further explanation. It just never happened in New England.

9. Wesleyan never sold out of parking permits.

Yes, we all know that parking in LA is a big old problem. But the campus actually ran out of on-site parking permits for students. Most of us had to either find outside parking, or take our chances with the meter maids.

It's further worth noting that in order to get your car onto campus at all, you have to pass through a gated security checkpoint. Every morning, first thing, traffic on the main roads around USC gets backed up for blocks because of the line to get through the checkpoints.

At Wesleyan, we parked in an open lot behind the cafeteria. Who knew I'd ever miss that?

As an additional note, I park outside the Shrine Auditorium. Back in September, they began some sort of bizarre and irritating construction outside the lot. They put up bleachers, closed off streets, and the lot got crammed to the gills because a ton of spaces got blocked off. Finally, the told us we couldn't park there, and moved us to another lot for a day. This was really very aggravating.

Eventually, I found out what it was all about. The Emmy Awards are held in the Shrine Auditorium. Which is where I park. I got booted for the Emmies.

This town is the strangest place on Earth.

8. You can do your banking at the USC Credit Union.

Yes, USC has its own student banking service. With free checking and everything. In my day, Wesleyan didn't even have an ATM.

7. Marching band practices in the middle of campus.

There they are, every morning, about a hundred of them, practicing on the track field. There's a guy with a megaphone screaming at them to "Go, guys, go! We're gonna kill 'em!" and they walk back and forth, practicing marching in step and playing various rousing football marches. Wesleyan ain't seen nothing like this. I mean, we had this one fraternity that made its pledges shave their heads and wear arm-bands and march in step. But none of them carried tubas.

6. USC Mascot has a name, not just a species.

USC has Tommy the Trojan, forever modeled in bronze on a giant pedestal in the middle of campus. Wesleyan has... well, a Cardinal.

You might say that the closest equivalent to the Tommy the Trojan statue at Wesleyan is pretty much the Douglass Cannon, a legendary Wesleyan artifact. Tradition holds that students steal the cannon with regularity and take in on fanciful trips around the world, taking pictures of it in all kinds of strange places. Or, at least, they would if the Cannon were ever actually placed on its pedestal in the middle of campus. I note that the Tommy wouldn't even fit on the Douglass Cannon pedestal, and of course, his natural pedestal is much larger than it needs to be. You can see Tommy yourself, at http://www.usc.edu/uscweb/cams/tommycam/.

In fact, this link will show you Tommy at this very minute, due to the wonders of the web-cam. Tommy is under 24-hour video surveillance. Perhaps if Wesleyan had such a system in place, they could return the Cannon to its rightful home. Then again, 24 hour up to the minute surveillance seems to me like an open invitation to mess with Tommy. I'm envisioning something involving an oversized novelty condom…

[Breaking news: Someone, recently, mummified Tommy entirely in duct tape. I'm not kidding. It is a truly beautiful sight. It turns out that this is done regularly before the USC/UCLA football game, for Tommy's protection.]

5. People find it really strange that you can be a writer and still TA math.

At small New England Liberal Arts schools, no one bats an eye if, say, a chemist decides to direct a musical revue. Here, though, in the land of giant schools, they believe in pigeonholing.

I hold a graduate degree in hard science. I TA for the Math Department here. There's all sorts of pressure on me as a Math TA. It's one of those "I have to be better than anyone else just to get taken seriously" kinds of things. The TA director keeps saying to me, "Now, you're not going to let me down here, right?" How the heck are you supposed to answer that?

On the other hand, being a TA at Wesleyan got you minimum wage or so. Being a TA at USC gets you a full tuition remission, plus more spending money than I ever earned at Wesleyan. I think that makes it worth the pressure.

As an aside, apart from TA positions, there's actually an organization that trains people to help tutor athletes. Explicitly, to tutor athletes. Not just students having problems, where everyone knows that they're talking about athletes. Explicitly athletes.

This clearly is anathema to the New England Liberal Arts frame of mind. But then, so are athletes in general, so who knows?

4. No cafeteria, but the food court's pretty cool.

Wesleyan had a cafeteria. It also had a couple of other places, for variety, in the Davenport Campus Center.

The Student Union at USC has a salad place, a sandwich place, a pizza place, a mini-mart, a coffee place, a frozen yogurt/smoothie place, a Ghiradeli Chocolate place, and a candy store. Then, on the lower floor, there's the Mexican place and the Japanese place. Oh, and outside there's the Carl's Jr. (A Southern California fast food chain, for the uninitiated).

Also, there's a coffee cart in the lobby of the Cinema-Television building.

Wesleyan had a cafeteria.

3. Wesleyan: Davenport Campus Center. USC: Lucas Instructional Building.

For those who don't get it, the Lucas Instructional Building is where the School of Cinema-Television is. Yeah. You know. The George Lucas Instructional Building. Right next to the Steven Spielberg Music Scoring Stage and the Harold Lloyd Soundstage. The Robert Zemeckis Digital Editing Center is a little further off campus, but it's still part of the facilities.

Who the hell is John Davenport?

2. One word: ROTC.

I swear to god, they parade around the campus in uniform during at regular intervals. I've seen fatigues and Navy beige walking around, handing out info flyers. The other day they were marching back and forth, doing little drill-like things for all the freshmen and their parents. At Wesleyan, they'd probably have been stoned. (By which I mean people would have thrown stones at them, although it occurs to me that the other interpretation is equally valid.)

And, the number one way in which USC is not Wesleyan is...

1. Approximately 25,000 more breasts.

No, I haven't been counting. I did the math. Wesleyan has about 3000 students, USC has about 28,000 students. It's that simple.

The thing that stands out, though (if you'll pardon the expression) isn't just the number. It's the increased prominence. Finding a woman wearing a normal T-shirt at USC is a rare thing indeed. Most wear shirts that are "-less". You know. Sleeveless, backless, strapless, midless. "-less". Those few shirts that do have all their parts are inevitably skin tight.

As an auxiliary difference, I notice that, at a casual inspection, I'd say at least 80% of the female students also shave their legs, though I admit I haven't embarked on an in depth study of that statistic. Further, since my mother reads Grumble, I'd just like to stress that I only bothered to engage in a cursory inspection because I felt the dictates of journalistic integrity demanded it for this article. My interest is purely professional. Really.

This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of the differences I've discovered between Wesleyan and USC. It leaves out, among others, the fountains, the busses, the ubiquitous fraternity/sorority presence, the average hair color, and, of course, the weather. I'm sure thousands of future differences will become clear to me over time.

I don't think I'd refer to this as over the rainbow. But it certainly isn't Connecticut.