I Figured Out What It Is About This Campus

This summer, I'm taking classes at a campus at the north end of the city.  This campus does not feel like home to me, and I figured out why.  There are actually two reasons.

1.  People keep asking me for directions.

I don't know what it is about me up here, but I'm forever getting stopped by folks who want to know where things are.  The thing is, this is only my fourth trip to this campus - I'm as clueless about this crap as they are.  I was really proud today to be able to direct someone to the library, though.  And that was entirely because I had just figured out how to get there. (I was, in fact, just leaving there when they asked me.)  No matter, though - they asked my help and I was able to give it!  Correctly, even!  The next guy, not even ten minutes later, asked where the bookstore is, and that was a big fail.  They're still hiding that particular place from me.  I haven't even seen a hint of it yet.

What is it about me that makes these people think I know where I am or what I'm doing?  I absolutely don't, and one day when I give the wrong directions and someone ends up in Narnia, they're going to figure it out.

2.  There are far too many white people here.

This is not a racist statement, as I myself am white.  I should probably back up at this point and mention that my entire education from the seventh grade on has been conducted in historically underprivileged schools.  In other words, I have never gone to a junior high or high school that was not located in the ghetto/barrio.  As a result, I feel much, much more comfortable on CCC campuses that are similarly located.  The two campuses I went to last semester for classes are only a couple of miles (or even blocks in one case) from my former high school, so I felt completely at home.  The people were generally the same, I was comfortable with the neighborhood... it was much better than this.

Here, I feel like I'm on an alien planet.  Everybody is totally serious, all the time.  I get it that school is serious, and summer semesters are particularly perilous (that's another blog post, but I have a paper due tonight, two tests early next week and another paper due at the end of next week, so you might have to wait a bit), but smile a bit, dammit.  This is probably also because it seems like the majority of people taking classes this summer go to four-year schools and are getting some cheap credit hours in while they're on summer break from the other place.  I gather that from the abundance of tanned, skinny co-ed looking girls I see wearing sorority t-shirts with their short-shorts that advertise their sorority's annual Quilting Bee and Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest For An Obscure Charity, which was held on March 11th of this year.  If the event in question had been held in 2004 or somesuch, that would mean that they were not, in fact, slumming this summer, but if that was the case, they would not look like the fresh young hussies they are, either.

I should also point out that this campus is approximately an hour away from my house.  It was the only Intermediate Algebra lecture class I could get that fits not only with my schedule, but Spikes, M1's and M2's, so I'm not complaining.  I have nine weeks left to go, which isn't too much.

It does make me feel like I'm in a White People Zoo, or invading a Free Range White People Commune or something.  I'm longing for just one car with too-loud bass, or those fighting lovebirds I posted about in the Spring.  It would make me feel less like an extra-terrestrial.