I've lived in Illinois, Missouri, Northern California, and briefly Texas and Delaware. While in California, I visited family in Spokane, WA, and Portland, OR. The Pacific Northwest is the most beautiful place I've ever been, both visually and climatically. I love rain and fall-type temperatures, so that obviously biases me to that area, but it's just so nice. I've never been much a beach person, but the dramatic cliffs of the Pacific Northwest beaches are really incredible.

I've always dreamed of tall pine trees and rolling forests hidden in mist. Going out there for the first time was so fulfilling. Coming back was so depressing. :)

I do really enjoy Columbia, but it's mainly nostalgia. I hated college (did a year a Culver-Stockton, then transferred to Mizzou, where I did three semesters and dropped out to join the Air Force), but my time in college was amazingly fun, so Columbia holds a lot of my best memories.

As an aside, I'd be interested in hearing about your college experience. I was attending for graphic design, but abandoned it for multiple reason (the main one being that I realized I wasn't really sorted for that sort of career; sitting (or standing, whatever) at a desk all day would drive me crazy. I much more suited to labor intensive jobs, turning wrenches). But also, I felt like the way college is designed really turned me off to the whole experience, with all the irrelevant mandatory credits and just the way they find every excuse to suck money out of you. I'm surprised I went for as long as I did, actually.

I think it depends upon your career but now as an artist, yeah, I would have done college completely differently. For art, what you need is a great portfolio (and to know people who already work in the business). A degree doesn't really seem to matter at all. I would have just taken those art classes that benefited me (anatomy and illustration) over and over and never have worried about getting an A in statistics or basket-weaving...

And while I don't regret it because I DID learn a lot from my illustration professor and a few others, I probably went to the wrong school. MU, in general, is sports and business. Living in the dorms for the first two years was horrible. Idiots kids just constantly drunk and passing out in my doorway. I remember my friend who went to Kirksville talking to me about how they played Magic in the cafeteria and had LAN parties every weekend and I wanted to throw the phone out the window!

I went from a Journalism major to Russian Literature to a Make-Your-Own Degree in the first two years. Finally got out of the dorms and into the thick of art classes junior year. I decided to go all out and do a BFA so I had to do almost double the credit hours I had been doing before to graduate in four years (and more importantly, before the money was gone), and they were almost all intense studio classes.

Between anxiety from courses, terrible advisers who led me astray, court-dealings with swindling landlords, and especially a 'break-up' with my only friends in the area, I got pretty lonely, sick, and dropped to under 110 pounds. Because of that intense workload I was in classes from 8 to 5 with not enough time to get to the next class let alone eat right. And then I spent most of the time after that in a studio painting or sculpting my homework until I fell asleep. I used to skip Art & Architectural History to take naps and use Tomb raider and Assassin's Creed to remember the landmarks. Getting 110% in a class I never went to was one of my proudest achievements in college. :)

I'm actually not too familiar with Kansas City; I never made my way there very often. Every now and then for concerts, but that's really it. I was there a few weekends ago, though, for the Oddball Comedy Tour thing with Aziz Ansari and Amy Schumer, which was absolutely incredible.

Growing up here, downtown was always a 'scary place' in my head. But thanks to gentrification, we've pushed all the poor people out so we can get back to having fun in skyscrapers. ;) Lots of restaurants, things to do now!