In her column “Geography of My Heart,” Dan Kubota explores memories from her favorite campus spots that live rent free in her head.

Confession time: it was the Campanile that gave me that “wow” moment — not Hoover Tower. Sacrilegious to say as a Stanford student, I know. Especially during Big Game season? Crazy talk.

In my defense, the elevator ride and small staircases to the top certainly added to the anticipation. My dad was super excited to show us around his alma mater; we’d made the drive up to UC Berkeley early that day in hopes of avoiding traffic and seeing all the sights. We were there for Cal Raijin’s spring showcase, Okaeri (“Coming Home”), to watch my cousin absolutely slay. It would be my first time watching her perform, but certainly not my last; this would be the performance that planted the seed in my head to eventually audition for Stanford Taiko not even two years later.

We walked through campus as he pointed out his freshman year dorm and various other things, possibly reliving the glory days. I vaguely remember Sproul (the name has a certain funny little character to it) and Sathers Gate (it’s got a look-alike in the Monsters Inc. world!), but nothing quite stuck in my head the way that the Campanile did.

I mean, how could anything else overshadow the view that was there? The world seemed to melt away as all the towering buildings shrank down to look like toys arranged by some very orderly child. The way that the cars rushed around the little lines of the street was almost comical. More fun still was trying to figure out where different landmarks were — so big in real life and now reduced to little pinpoints on the horizon. I felt like I was stepping into my dad’s world a little more as I squinted to find the landmarks he was pointing out. In trying to see these seemingly ordinary tan and gray buildings and the dots in the distance with a little more excitement, I let go of my apathetic “I’m too cool to be sightseeing with my family” teenage brain to embrace the childlike wonder of it all. Maybe I could call this place home one day, if I dared to dream enough.

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And then I got into Stanford. My “dream school” since childhood, if you can even call it that. (I was lured by the promise of endless grilled cheese from The Melt if I worked there and books upon books at the Stanford bookstore.)

My dad was fine with it, I’d like to think, albeit a little hurt I didn’t choose his alma mater. School spirit and all that.

I think he’s chill with it now. He told me he was proud of me the other day and cautioned me to not burn myself out, sometime before I moved in again. Like that was going to do anything. Burnout seems to be a constant of my time here at Stanford — come back from break feeling well rested, try to take on a hard course load to make up for what I had to let go of for my well being, burn out again, rinse and repeat.

Would it have been this way had I made my home across the bay?

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Hoover Tower just didn’t have the same “wow” factor. 

Okay, that’s not entirely true; it wowed me in a different way. 

It was just supposed to be a check mark off my college bucket list. We HAD to go up Hoover Tower because how could I be a Stanford student if I didn’t go up it at least once during my time here? I had to take advantage of the free admissions while I could, honestly. Of course, I insisted on some photos because we were tourists visiting this attraction for the first time. I propped my phone up on various ledges and surfaces to get the wackiest angles, and my friends graciously obliged. Photos done, I just had to go look at that view; was that San Jose off in the distance? Oh, over there is FloMo (I think I can see my window from here!) EVGR looks so foreboding just rising out of the ground like that!

Mindless, excited chatter aside, seeing our sprawling campus spread around Hoover Tower the way that ripples spread out after the skipped rock sinks to the bottom of the lake was a magical experience of its own. I’m not entirely sure I have the words to say exactly what I was feeling, to be honest. There’s something so bittersweet about seeing something so dear to your heart from so far up, something that’s barely been a physical place of residence for you but is now so much of a home in a way. 

Every time I go up Hoover Tower now as a sophomore (wow, so far away from my frosh fall self!), I am reminded of the naive way I was eagerly bumbling around campus. I’m able to let go of the workworkworkyou’resobehindgottacatchup mindset — put that heavy load down. Even if it’s just for the half hour I’m fourteen stories up in the air, I’m able to leave my worries and stresses about school downstairs with my massive backpack and helmet down in those metal cubbies. I can’t totally escape it, but for a little bit, I’m reminded how there’s so much more to life than just work.

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Of course, I can’t reflect on my memories of both schools without at least mentioning the friendly family rivalry. Aside from my dad, his siblings are all Berkeley alums, and so is one of my cousins! You can imagine how they reacted when I decided to jump ship and choose Stanford over Berkeley. We’ve still got that banter going every time they ask about how college is going and how sports are. (Of course, they all came to Stanford to watch us get creamed and for them to hold onto the Axe another year.) My mom, aunts and grandma on my mom’s side could not be more excited that I’m at Stanford; I’ve taken my mom and grandma on bike tours of campus, complete with taking our bikes on the Caltrain and exploring downtown Palo Alto! (Also, guess who showed up to Big Game with Stanford merch next to my dad in his Berkeley beanie?)

Rambling reflections aside, the parallels I’ve found between the two schools physically embodied in the parallels between the two bell towers make me feel a bit at home in both places. My family will always find community at Cal as alums, as I will when I try to see Berkeley through their eyes, and hopefully also at Stanford as I make my own mark on this campus, writing my story independently of my own family.