Snobbery

I'm going to have to throw out the possibility that some majors may in fact be smarter than others. And I don't just mean the biochemical engineers. Maybe this is all coming about because I'm something of a logophile, and an English major, and therefore am frequently surrounded by those who have a similar love of words, phraseology, orature, and hearing the sound of our own voices saying those words. (Hence... this blog. Obviously.)

I've taken the opportunity this semester to delve a little bit into another area of study that caught my interest last fall, and signed up for a sociology of gender class. It was pretty okay, but definitely felt like a battle against my own weak-sauce conservativism (I say weak-sauce simply because I consider myself predominantly politically illiterate and completely unable to argue my own opinions, as I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them). Anyways, I'm getting so far off the track that it's boring me to death, and we all know that I get more pleasure out of writing these things that any of you get from reading them, so if I'm bored, you must be gouging your eyes out, or no longer reading this post (congrats if you are). Back to sociology of gender!

The first day of class, we took the time to have everyone introduce themselves, their major, hometown, etc. This, I believe, is moderately unusual in a class of 40-50 students, but we did it anyways because the syllabus (and the class) was painfully simple and took about .2 seconds to discuss. The breakdown of this monotonous introduction hour came to about this: the majority of the class were either sociology or psychology minors, but there were a few variants here and there, some business majors, a theater major, ... and myself, the single, solitary English major in the whole place. Now, I don't mean to be judgmental (*ahem* who are we kidding? I'm being hugely judgmental, and you better believe I mean it) but I've come to the conclusion that I think I'm smarter than at least a few of these people. 

Don't get me wrong. They're still valuable human beings who are capable of doing many good things, and somewhere in my heart of hearts, I probably have some kind of love for them. 

But I cannot hold back the stink eye when I catch someone saying the word "like" 30 times in a 45-second comment. (See my post A Rant: "Like" for more on this subject.) And even though that may be a worst-case-scenario, over the past few days of listening to presentations on research papers, I've been subjected to some of the most horrifically slang-peppered verbosity of my life. Or maybe it's just never bothered me this bad.... in which case, I can only blame my sociology of gender class. And who ever heard of a sociology class making someone more intolerant? And, in my case, I probably got a little more sexist because the girls are far more likely to make idiotic comments that are watered down with "like"s and "ya knows" and "so"s and "just"s and "just-like"s and "doesthatmakesense"s that if you cut them out, they're probably only saying somewhere in the ballpark of twelve significant words that contribute to a coherent message for every 50 that come out of their mouths .... Not that I'm suggesting that my professor is, in any way, shape or form, responsible for my decreased tolerance and increased sexism. It's my classmates! 

I suppose it isn't fair of me to feel like I am smarter than these individuals, because they probably know a lot more about sociology than I do. And yet, I cannot stop myself from believing that a vital part of being smart is being able to communicate in a way that doesn't make you sound like an insipid thirteen year old in a Justin Bieber t-shirt. (Okay, so maybe the t-shirt has nothing to do with anything.) But seriously guys. I don't want your message from concentrate. I want the concentrate when I'm at school. Don't make me listen to all your other stupid words, please. You're wasting them, and you're wasting my time.