The 2026 Northwestern Essay #9--Going West

No. 20 ranked Northwestern (6-1) goes on the road to Eugene, Oregon to play the University of Oregon (4-3).  The game is once again on Peacock, and it is a 3:30 Eastern/12:30 Pacific kickoff.  Oregon is coming off a shocking and frankly pretty bad loss to Illinois in Champaign and this week fired their offensive coordinator.  Injuries have been an issue--quarterback Dante Moore got a concussion from a horrendous cheap shot in the USC game--but they have just been kinda disappointing.  If you told me going into this season that Northwestern would be only a 3 1/2 point underdog for this game (and 3 points is generally considered the home field bonus, so the odds makers thinks the two teams are basically even), I would have told you that you were crazy.  But I think Northwestern has a real shot to win this game, and if they do we are now seriously talking about big things this season.

The fact that Northwestern is traveling to Oregon for a conference game is still very strange.  Early season, non-conference game, sure.  But it still feels very odd that the West Coast is part of the Big Ten now.  The Big Ten, to me, is the quintessential manifestation of the Midwest, and the Midwest is a different place from the West Coast.  College sports, because it contains so many state institutions, represents place, or at least it did.  Place matters, because places are different, and where you are impacts you.

I spent the entirety of my growing up within 20 miles of the Atlantic Ocean.  The first time I ever went "West" was to visit Chicago my junior year of high school for a forensics competition, a trip that led directly to me applying and eventually going to Northwestern.  As I mentioned in the intro essay in this series, I spent a bit less than a year in Colorado.  And then of course I have lived in Ohio since 2011, which is firmly the Midwest, albeit with a dash of the East Coast and Appalachia thrown in for spice (Columbus is firmly Midwestern; Cleveland feels more like an East Coast/Midwest mix; Cincinnati is an Appalachia/Midwest mix).  But not the West, with one major exception.

In law school, I had a chance to get a job in California.  The first time I had ever been to California, San Francisco to be specific, was to interview for the job I eventually took.  I didn't set off to move out west--it just kinda happened.  Well, that's not quite right.  The truth is that I went to California for two reasons.  One, I wanted to see if I could.  I had this sense that my possibilities were sort of limitless--here I was at a big fancy law school which opened all sorts of doors, many of which I hadn't really considered prior.  The most out-there possibility I could think of was to move to California, and it was exciting that I was in a position where I could actually just decide to do that.

I think that is in many ways the magic of the West.  Obviously for people who grew up there it is just home and nothing particularly special, but for most people who live east of the Rockies it has an almost mystical quality, kind of like Oz.  It seems simultaneously impossibly remote and exotic but also accessible.  It is a place to do the thing that seems like you can't do it.  In a weird way, I get why people two hundred years ago got in covered wagons and followed the Oregon Trail, because I did same, albeit with far less chance of contracting dysentery or breaking a wagon axle.

The other reason, and I don't believe I have ever admitted this out loud to anyone before, was this girl.  In the end, I had no shot with her--not for any real reason other than timing, but the timing made it impossible.  And deep down I knew I didn't really have a shot.  But I had a crush on her so big that it has only been surpassed by the one that came when I met my wife.  And she was from San Francisco, was going back out there, and I thought maybe if I just hang around something will happen.  I knew if I vocalized this to anyone, they would (correctly, justifiably) tell me that this was a bad idea and I shouldn't do it.  So, I just kept this motivation to myself.

Objectively, my outing to California was kind of a disaster.  The firm I went to work for, one of the oldest in the West, went bankrupt in the '08 crash about a month before I was to start there.  I found a job out there with another firm, but slammed head-long into a bad bout of depression that sort of poisoned the well there.  But I managed to get another law firm gig that was perfectly fine for a year, and in the interim I got the job with the judge here in Columbus that brought me to Ohio.  So, in terms of employment things were very rough.  

But I look back on my time in California very fondly.  The process of deciding to go out there was dubious to say the least, and when the time came to move to Columbus I was ready to come back East, but I enjoyed my time there and I am glad I did it.  California is the most beautiful place I have ever been to in terms of physical geography.  I miss the hills of San Francisco, the awe-inspiring peace of the redwoods of Muir Woods, the smell of the Pacific Ocean, hiking through the valleys of the Sierras.  

But the thing I miss the most is something I am not sure is an actual thing and not a figment of my imagination--I feel like the light in California is different.  I noticed it for the first time on my first trip down to Monterrey, where the scrub hills have this golden glow because of the way the light hits them.  But I've seen it all over California.  Everything kind of glows, as if the light is hitting everything at a different angle.  Again, I am not sure this is a real thing--it sounds ridiculous as I read what I am writing.  But I am reminded of it every time I go back to California, and it makes the place feel special.

Sometimes you need to do something to prove to yourself you can do it.  If you know that you can choose anything, I think you are more free to pick what exactly you want.  I have never really been enticed to move back to California since I left in 2011.  But I know that I could, and because of that I could live functionally anywhere.  It makes the choices I am making more meaningful, not a product of necessity but of voluntary selection.  You might say that doesn't matter but it is comforting to me in a way.

I guess, for that reason, the West has never lost its status in my mind as a place of possibility, even if I don't really have any desire to pursue that possibility.  

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