I am an Alumna.

Of UMass Boston.

Thank God.

I was just at my parents' house, doing some laundry, and I had a chance to leaf through my alumni magazine. Not of my alma mater on the Atlantic, dear UMass Boston (Motto: Non Credo Stare Academiae), but my psuedo alma mater. Bennington College, the school from which I was expelled midway through my second sophomore year.

Looking at the glossy pages of "Bennington Magazine", I expected to feel nostalgia, regret, or some pang of sadness. Instead, relief.

Thank God.

Thank God I was inexplicably expelled by my dear old Abortia Mater, because otherwise I might have turned out a narrow, pretensious, self-righteous, unemployable jackass like the motley motherfuckers in that magazine.

(But, Hobo, I thought that you were friends with several Bennington Alumni...)
(So I am. I don't know how they escaped without becoming douchebags, but rest assured, I would have.)

Only the Bennington Alumni Magazine could profile so many unemployed and psuedo-employed graduates without some, if not revelation, reflection. There was a little puff piece, profiles of "graduate trustees", students who were asked to contribute administratively after graduation. And out of four graduate trustees, only two were even arguably employed. And of those two, one was a "Yoga Teacher".

With a 120,000 education. Jesusom.

UMass Boston may be deficient in some ways. Certainly, pedagogically, UMass is inconsistent. Some Professors are passionate, brilliant, organized, and really seem to understand what they have to offer their students, and what to demand from those students in return. Others may simply have taken the wrong shuttle bus from the red line, intending to go to the Bayside Expo Center to see the Boat Show, and stuck around. Also, the facilities range from crumbling, airless, windowless, and crowded to gleaming, impressive, and useless. Actually, there's no range. Those are the two options. But UMass Boston at least delivers on its promises. If you keep showing up, eventually you'll get a degree in something. And I did. For about 20,000.

(But, Hobo, people at Bennington get degrees, too...)
(They sure do. Bachelor of Arts. Good for them. Let's teach Yoga!)

Bennington College taught me one thing. It taught me that staying in one's room and crying is only charming for the first year, and after that, becomes tedious. No.

It taught me that you can't sit back at wait for people to realize that you're brilliant, witty, and really talented. Because there are tons of over-praised toddlers, grown up and mewling for cadeaux, who will drown out any quiet genius you suspect yourself of possessing. And that quiet patience will look, to authority figures brainwashed or exhausted by the political machinations of the esteem generations, to be lack of effort or enthusiasm. At best. At worst, pathological apathy and deviant torpor.