So I get to class an hour early to go over my notes for the exam.  It’s art history, so a substantial portion of my grade is solely derived from my ability to cram twenty-or-so major/major-ish paintings into my head right before the test.  The remainder of your grade is in essays, which is another recitation of facts embellished by pretty words to boost the grade.  Any of my glowingly graded style analyses or show reviews have contained about twenty percent actual information and eighty percent arty bullshit, which the professors eat up like a dog whose found rancid meat in the garbage can.

Anyway, my genius classmates stroll in and (as is the norm) act as though they needed the environment of a stogy lecture room to properly panic about an exam.  I mean, Missy and Boffy were probably doing each others’ nails half an hour ago while listening to the latest Staind tripe track  (or, depending on the counterculture in play here, possibly Morticia and Beatrice listening to The Cure), but as soon as they walk in and take out the iPod ear buds it’s as though they suddenly realize the only thing they know about Salvador Dali is that he had one wicked mustache.

The professor strolls in and announces that a virus ate her floppy disk (read: I’m computer illiterate so every time I fuck something up I’ll blame it on some virus or another), and as such we’ll have to take the test in the last half of class after she bores us into an unnatural zombie-slumber with a video she’s chosen to play to cover her lack of knowledge on anything relating to the subject.  After many people make vague claims that they’ll do better now than later, unfair blah blah etc etc, the professor folds like a deck of cards and gives us half an hour to study while she re-prints the test.

Eventually the class moves away from reading their notes on obscure surrealist painters and starts to talk about regional accents.  One girl, who comes from Vermont and I can only presume was carried around on a golden pedestal cushioned by pillows stuffed with the feathers of ninety Bald Eagles, says with stone-cold seriousness that she doesn’t understand why Vermont is the only place in the world where people don’t have accents.  “I mean,” she elaborates, “people from France sound like French people, and people from Georgia sound like, you know, rednecks, but … it’s true, they do!  But yeah, people from Vermont don’t sound like anything.”

It goes on like this.  One guy, who spends every lecture drawing ultra-traditional renderings of the dullest models in the dullest poses imaginable, says that all modern art is a crock because the artists are influenced by other artists, and that means they’re copycats why can’t think up anything original.  I ask him who his favorite artist is, and he replies “Michelangelo, man.  He was, like, amazing!”  “So,” I respond, “you’re saying Michelangelo was influenced by nobody at all.”  And he agrees!

After the exam I go outside and walk by the waiting college transit bus, and when I look in I see almost every single person holding an iPod.  Not those iPod Minis, those are for cheap losers.  They all have the full-sized color-screen models, or those new iPod Nanos.  And what kills me is that they’re all wearing the uncomfortable, crappy sounding little bud earphones that only serve to let people know that you are, in fact, listening to an honest-to-god Apple device.  They’re taking massive amounts of ear-canal damage to maintain their cool little images, and everyone’s perfectly fine with it. 

I feel like such a hypocrite in this situation; I own an iPod Mini, and before I came to SCAD I loved having it.  I even was thinking of selling it and upgrading to a 20GB model.  But ever since I got here, it’s like they’re the fucking badge of essential coolness or something, which makes them about as cool as wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt while talking about how your parents totally don’t get your emo-tastic gore-art.

Okay, end.  I’m going to go do the dishes before the giant mountain of pots and plates falls and kills the dog.