Bad Afternoon

The afternoon was terrible though! I kept trying to study in the department lounge while the Master's students chatted away. One of them was non-irritating, but as for the rest... for some reason, we let in these really fratty kids this year and they do little more than bitch about having to read books for class. Now, understand that this is, again, a graduate department. So, hanging around the grad department and bitching about having to read is about as annoying as joining a baseball team and complaining that you hate to run. Of course, that's a bad analogy. Sports is really important, after all. Not like reading.

But, I'm not making this up- these kids were painfully fratty. How fratty were they? Well, let me say that their real problem, as they expressed it, was that they think doing the reading is "fucking gay". Note also that it soon became clear that they were bitching about having to read a 37 page article. In a graduate seminar. Which they are taking because they hope to be teachers one day.

See, there are two kinds of people who want to teach High School- the occasional sensitive soul who loves learning and education and all of those "fucking gay" things, and the more frequent "dudes" who like to hang out with High School kids because they're still at that same developmental level themselves.

Before long there were six or seven weirdly hostile fratty dudes hanging out in the lounge where I am still trying to read my faggy book. They all talk at about 11 because they're fratty, and everyone talks loudly in this part of the country. Fratty dudes really only have about five topics of conversation:
1) Those fucking minorities are way too sensitive,
2) Would you or wouldn't you ever "fuck a fat chick"?
3) Books, theatre, paintings, learning and human reason itself- all "gay".
4) Did you see that game last night? Okay, what about the other one? Did you see that one?
5) "I'd do her."
They pretty much spiralled through all five and back again a few dozen times. Finally, I gave up and left to go somewhere more academic than the graduate department lounge.

Here's the thing I don't get- the complaint is always that people who are into those "gay" things like culture and art are "elitists". Talk about a book you read, and you get called "pretentious", or a "snob". These ones actually bitched about those annoying classmates of theirs who do the readings before the seminar. But, here you have people that literally take offense whenever they encounter anyone who has any interests aside from the five topics above (add one more- "Have you played that new X-Box game Mass Murderer?") and that's somehow more "everyman".

So, I'm at a loss. Is it the university that is piss poor? Or state universities in general? Or is everywhere in the country considered the frat house now?