On Grad Students, Briefly

So, take II of the 21st birthday is currently underway, in that many of my friends born after me are just now turning 21 (I am in the middle of a birthday surge, it's intense). This means that I suddenly have a whole new group of people to celebrate the cocktail hour with, which is great, but it also means that I am now forced to confront the sad existence of real collegiate bars. Oofta (a grad student tonight claimed to have known a Minnesotan who used 'Oofta' in place of expletives. I assured him that I did not know any such Minnesotans). Tonight, after class, I went out with a friend for a few beers to celebrate her 21st birthday. We ended up meeting with a group of grad students at a sad bar near campus- the kind of place with sticky tabletops, a snack menu and Third Eye Blind tracks that are impossible to talk over. The kind of place that accepts fake IDs and where anyone in business attire is hugely out of place, even scorned.

Us: Hello, grad students! What are you drinking? We point to pitchers of beer on table.
Grad Students: The cheapest beer on the menu. They smile as if they are proud of this and motion for us to join them, which we do.
Me: Oh… -I remove my jacket and sit down- That sounds... great.
The waiter brings more glasses to accommodate us. We drink the crappy beer because it’s there, not because we enjoy it.

Sure, I'm being harsh about their selection of beer, but really, there are plenty of reasons to complain about the grad students last night. For instance, grad students studying the arts- especially writing- are destined to be unhappy. They may be fantastic poets, but fact of the matter is that they’re 25 and still drinking cheap beer in sketchy bars on Thursday nights and talking about the economic advantages of vegetarianism because they're broke- perpetually- and don’t even realize that their lack of brokeness stems from the fact that they spend $30 every Thursday night on crappy beer and hormone slathered chicken fingers (CHICKEN FINGERS!). Grad students studying the arts are brassy- though only when intoxicated,- jaded and loud, otherwise they are unassuming and thrive on insecure eye contact, thinking it's attractively submissive and therefore somehow empowering. They wear nubby sweaters and smoke a lot of cigarettes (but won't eat meat- chicken fingers excluded- because it's bad for the body. Also, they don't seem to realize that cigarettes cost more money than a beer upgrade). They like to say mean things about their parents and like to remind you that you’re an undergraduate. They say things like, "Pay up, undergraduates!" Also, they seem to be an incestuous group. Whenever someone rises to leave the table they all huddle together and gossip about how X and Y made out last weekend and it was so intense because they both just got out of really long relationships. It's like 7th grade, with beer. Grad students studying the arts are ridiculous- I hope never to be one.