signalnoise

So, apparently "getting a job" is the new theme of this journal.

The other day I realized: I need to get out of graduate school. I mean, I was already planning for next year to be my last year. But it sort of struck me the other day. I can't tolerate other graduate students anymore.

Don't get me wrong: all of my colleagues are really smart, interesting people. I've met some really fantastic people here, that I'll be glad to call friends and colleagues for years to come. But being *around* grad students is just something that is exhausting. The constant cultural elitism/oneupsmanship is just more than I can take.

Have you'all seen this blog: Stuff White People Like? The conceit is that its written as a kind of "advice column" for brown, poor people that come into contact with yuppies and urban hipsters. And it perfectly skews the kind of suburban malaise about a lack of "authenticity" that plagues hipsters and is translated into a really lame search for "legitimate" expression via buying more shit. To prove I'm not above laughing at myself, check out the entry on graduate school.

ANYWAY. Being in grad school is like being around these "white people" all. the. fucking. time. The constant diatribes about television, the quality of coffee in the neighborhood, bemoaning the lack of "real" Thai food in Hyde Park, and on and on and on. It's more than I can fucking take. It may just be that I'm a cultural philistine who's happy to feed his fat face with anything that holds still long enough... or that I'm just not a fucking douche. I dunno. It's up for debate.

And yes, it's true: Hyde Park is *not* perfect. Yes, I do wish we had an "L" stop. Yes, I do wish shit didn't close down at 10pm. Yes, please, could a store open where I could buy *socks*? But, seriously, this place ain't so bad.

Honestly, if I was being cruel I might suggest that most grad students are not as "down" with living in a mixed income, racially diverse neighborhood as they think they *should* be. So they come up with all these cultural elitism narratives to defend moving to the highly hardcore Lakeview.....

But I think what is really going on is that grad students use cultural elitism to defend their choices. Basically, we're smart people. Most of us. But we're not the *smartest* people. We just have a particular interest in reading stuff and writing about it. However, it's hard when you look around at your friends from high school and college (some of whom are much smarter than you), who are buying homes, traveling, having babies .... and you're still living in a crummy one bedroom apartment and eating Ramen noodles threes night a week.

In effect, there's nothing special about us - but we live these really limited, infantalizing lives. To defend that choice, grad students develop a really complex internal story about their unappreciated genius and taste. And dear Lord, is it some insufferable shit to have to be around day in and day out.

You see the same thing when discussions of *pay* comes up. You have never seen a group of people believe they should be paid more for doing less than grad students. Suburban entitlement all *over* the place - like knee deep in this shit. Note to grad students: you chose to come here, are getting paid to read books you love, sleep till 10am, and fuck around on Facebook. This makes your claims of being oppressed hard to swallow. (Yes, at some places students are treated badly. Yes, we deserve protection. But grad school is an inherently *finite* experience, with all kinds of advantages, including leading to a *job for life.* A little pain might do you some good.)

What's really ironic is that the people *most* able to lay claims to cultural elitism are the ones *least* likely to do it. My good friend J grew up in another country (OK: Canada) in a major urban center. His mother was an artist, his dad a professor and sort of low-level public intellectual. He plays the violin - so well that he considered doing it *professionally.* He went to some fancy pants elite high school. He reads philosophy and serious novels for fun. And he also loves takeout Chinese and has a nary a bad word to say about the 'hood. He is, in other words, not a fucktard. He, more than anyone else, is the biggest support for my claim that grad student cultural elitism is less about appreciating "fine things" and more about building a (really annoying) story of self worth.

Yes, faculty can be the same way. And yes, there will be new annoyances once I'm an assistant professor. But at least they are all *new* issues. I just need to escape grad students. Seriously.