S o c i al S t u d i e s: Ta k e s A w a y O u r By Hannah Quicksell About a month ago, I found myself in the middle of a “townie” birthday party. It was everything I dreamed of, complete with shitty beer, hairspray that belonged in 2006, and a shirt that read, “Cool story babe/ now make me a sandwich.” I went with two female friends from the College and we were entirely out of our element. My friends engaged in a “girls vs. boys” beer pong game, while I, amused, kept quietly to myself. The girls closed in on the win, when one of them yelled something along the lines of, “Woo! Yeah! The boobs win everything!” to which I quickly, and much too loudly, joked, “Except the patriarchy!” As soon as the words fell from my lips, I received some self-conscious, weak chuckles from my friends and rather confused looks from everyone else who heard me. Now, let me clarify that if I had been surrounded entirely by my Grinnell friends, that joke would have received an uproariously large laugh, or at least a depressed chuckle. In that moment of being the worst-person-atthe-party though, I realized that I had not always been an academic prick. Moreover, I used to be able to glide through many different professional and social atmospheres before college. These days, the only moments when I am not sobered from feeling like the mutant elephant in the room are when I am with other attendees of in-themiddle-of-nowhere, bourgie colleges. As I tuck more semesters under my philosophy major belt, Grinnell Col-
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lege has slowly made me incapable of interacting with most people who are in existence. Furthermore, due to the intense nature of an education like Grinnell's, the amount of time spent absorbed academia has deprived many people the opportunity to learn basic, real-world skills. By the time each and everyone of us reaches our fourth year, intellectualism will instill the value of non-practical skills and life-goals, which will leave us, to some degree, lacking normal abilities and unable to socialize with the majority of humans. Grinnellians pride themselves on their “quirks,” which are normally a quaint expression of a student's perceived individuality. However, many times the lack of normalcy results in a ripple effect of problems. Our own disabilities in common society hinder other people's quality of life. First of all, Claustrophobic, academic atmospheres encourage students to forget, or never learn, normal social skills. Intellectualism overpowers qualities like kindness or empathy, is our go to for impressing people, and worst of all, tends to make us believe we are always right when it comes to facts. For example, I was spending time with a friend and a guy I’ll call Merle* (all of the names here were changed). To impress my friend, Merle without provocation would always answer automatically translate himself into English. While it was impressive that he speaks Norwegian so well, it was enough for us to stop asking him ques-
tions altogether forever. Another one of my personal favorite worst-person-ever stories was Gunther*, who just trying to make friends. In response to a friend saying his major was Russian, Gunther replied, whilst stroking his peach fuzz no less, “Hmm. ... Well I like to think that music is my second language.” Later, Gunther was describing how his local Midwestern, American Indian tribe had begun to accept him as one of their own, and he actually knew their traditions better than many of the tribe members his age. Desperate to throw this guy a rope, I strung together that they must be Lakota, because a lot of cultural knowledge was scattered when they were exiled from Minnesota. To this he starkly said, “No, you're wrong. They're the Sioux.” The examples given are extreme cases of young adults who have spent too much of their life dreaming of academia. However, there are smaller examples of socially frictional moments: 1. The terrible person asking longwinded, douchy questions when class ended two minutes ago. 2. The awful, road-bumpesque small talk that occurs far too often. 3. The fact that we, as a campus, have tried to be so socially just that we have become paranoid. 4. The little shit who opens the grill door, completely oblivious to the fact he or she exists among people. There are degrees to which people start to live only in their heads. The occasional student is so practical that
