Sarah Palin's College Daze (Slate)

[LeighAnn]

http://www.slate.com/id/2201332/

~snip~

First, Palin and Ketchum (and two other high school friends) lighted on the University of Hawaii in Hilo. Drawn by the promise of warmth and sunshine, the four girls quickly learned that Hilo was in fact quite rainy and immediately either transferred out or declined to register. (The school has no record Palin ever enrolled.)

Next stop: Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, where it was sunnier and where an aunt of Palin's lived nearby. Palin enrolled in the business administration program. Two of the four girls got homesick and returned to Alaska, but Palin and Ketchum stayed, renting an apartment one block from the ocean in Waikiki. By the end of freshman year, Palin and Ketchum decided they'd grown tired of this hard-won sunshine and arranged to transfer out.

Next stop: North Idaho College in Cour d'Alene. (Palin was born in Idaho.) Here, Johnson writes, they "immersed themselves in a more traditional college life" and lived in a coed dorm. According to Ketchum, Palin, who enrolled as a general studies major, remained interested primarily in sports, but Palin spent a semester working in a TV production studio. This past June, North Idaho College's Alumni Association named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a distinguished alumna and invited her to give the commencement address in 1999. But Palin attended the school for only one year—a spokeswoman for the college told the Associated Press, "We were not able to track down club affiliations or anything"—before departing. This time, Ketchum stayed put.

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