Today I feel old.
The undergrads are back on campus, and more spastic and douchey than ever, if possible. This is combined with all of the first-year med students, who I'm convinced were placed in a room and told they are better than everyone else on campus.
Anyway, the students are running to class. Running. I guess maybe they are late, or they are lost. The ones that are driving are looking for a parking space close to class, really a moot point on any campus. This part is pretty comical.
I usually ride my bike to work--it's a 6-minute trip one-way on the sidewalks. But today I drove, parked a little farther away, and walked in to the lab. This exercise takes about 30 minutes, so it's not the most efficient. It was a good decision, however, because the sidewalks were jam-packed with lost freshmen. Not to mention those magical mystical people that walk alone, but somehow take up an entire sidewalk all by themselves.
So I'm trying to remember what I was like as an undergraduate student. As an entering freshman in the fall of 2000, I routinely wore pajamas to my early classes, didn't have a cell phone (!), went to the dorm to shower after chemistry, then went to the afternoon classes in regular clothes. I drove a 1990 Honda Accord, which wasn't fancy, but it got good gas mileage and transported me from A to B. College was lovely, and I loved the freedom of it all. I remember being so excited to start college, so nervous that I would fail, so thrilled to be making new friends that I had lots in common with, and very excited about my brand-new compaq laptop. I stayed up as late as I wanted.
I wonder if I was as immature as the incoming college students I see on campus today. I mean, probably I was. But my mom raised me to at least be considerate. Also, I had THREE campus jobs. Two in a lab, and one teaching aerobics. Combine that with a major in biochemistry and molecular biology, and you've got a busy girl.
The students today have this awfully inflated sense of entitlement with their iPhones and new cars financed by the "Bank of Mommy and Daddy". I know from my own experience with college students that half of them do not know how to write a complete sentence containing a subject and a verb that agree. Rob and I have concluded that college now is an extension of high school, which, sadly, makes grad school the equivalent of what college used to be. I guess this a natural progression of things.
Does anyone else feel this way?
Even though I'm acting like an old lady, I'm trying to remember that this is a huge step in these kids' lives, and maybe they're not quite as douchey as they seem. They are probably all excited and overwhelmed at the same time. College is a huge adjustment.
Despite myself, I'd like to wish all the beginning high-schoolers and college kids a very happy and successful school year. Hrmph.
