The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Media Credit: Nick Selm/The University News [Click to enlarge]

As the second semester begins, I note not only that I have five semesters to go until I graduate, but I also make note of that one-way train ride to Santa Barbara, Calif., that I have planned for 2007.

The reasons for my excitement about this trip are because, all in all, St. Louis is not that great a place to live. For nine years of my life, I lived in sunny, beautiful, year-round 70-degree weather, attend a school with diverse students and lived with a free-spirited, kind and tolerant population in Santa Barbara, Calif. I remember that even at age 10, when I moved to St. Louis, I noticed the vast differences between West Coast and Midwest mentalities and views.

One of my complaints about the city is St. Louis' boring geography. I'm sorry, but the murky Mississippi River just does not cut it for me; not in comparison with More Mesa Beach in Santa Barbara, that is. Moreover, Mother Nature does not know her limits when it comes to St. Louis weather; it is always extreme. In the summer, it gets brutally hot with unbearable humidity, which is extremely inconvenient for those with naturally wavy hair, like me. The winter gets brutally cold, and sometimes it rains for weeks at a time.

My second complaint about St. Louis is the offensive views and attitudes held by some St. Louisans. Next time somebody asks me, "So where did you go to high school?" I think I am going to pull my naturally wavy hair out. The reason why this question is asked in St. Louis is for a very simple and superficial reason: It answers the following three questions about a person: How much money they have, what religion they are and where they live. My answer to this question: "I went to WC-High." Most St. Louisans have never heard of this high school. That's because it stands for, "who cares?"

St. Louis has rich diversity, but diversity does not always equal tolerance. That's because in St. Louis there is a tendency to live and work with one's own kind, much like self-imposed segregation.

We then have our hopeless sport teams that tease our feelings in the worst ways by raising our hopes and then embarrassing us in front of the entire nation on live television. The Rams, Blues and Cardinals all have wicked athletic talent and potential; I'm still not sure why they don't use them, like when we lost to the far less-skilled Boston Red Sox this past year in the World Series.

Last, if you are a Democratic or an Independent voter from St. Louis, there is no point in going to the polls for any state or national political elections. I have learned the harsh reality that I am living in a Red State and that the state will, without a doubt, go Republican in every election, which is much different from the way it was in Santa Barbara, where liberals lobbied and fought against the many injustices suffered by minorities, lower-earning citizens and the environment.

I am constantly told that St. Louis is a "wonderful place to raise a family" and that it is a "small world," with lots of "sight-seeing places." I would never agree to raise my own family here in St. Louis. As for sight-seeing places, the Arch is nothing more than a tall hunk of overrated metal that I've engraved my initials on. Being in the state of Missouri makes it only worse, where we carry the contradictory state motto on our vehicle license plates which truly should be stating, "Show Me (the way out of here) State."

Batool Alsamadi is a sophomore studying accounting.

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