I'm Not the Dummy

Tonight was a fantastic night. I had class (which was not fantastic), and then I went to swing dancing in the Graduate Complex Lounge. It was great! There was a little lesson, and then we just danced until we wanted to leave. It brought back old memories of Notre Dame and swing dancing. I was so pleasantly surprised that there were a good number of guys there, and they did their job very well in rotating and asking the girls to all dance in turn. It was such a nice pleasant atmosphere, and everyone was extremely friendly.

Then, when we decided to leave, Dave and LaToya and Kathryn and I decided to go out for a drink. Now, I'm not a big drinker (my parents can attest to my being an extremely cheap date), and I don't generally like the bar scene a whole lot, when the music is so loud you can't hear anyone, etc. But tonight it was really good. After the four of us had been there awhile, just chatting, a couple of Dave and LaToya's law school classmates showed up, who were also extremely nice guys. Everyone made Kathryn and I (who are both non-law students -- I know her from work at the Center for Gifted Education) feel as if we were already a part of the group. It was seamless and very generous of them. Notre Dame and Teach for America were never so open. I always felt vaguely like I was reliving middle school in social situations, and there was none of that overtone here.

I've been thinking back a lot to Notre Dame, I think because it's a more analogous experience to school here than Teach for America was, and as we were walking home tonight and lightly discussing politics, I found myself very comfortable talking about it with Dave and LaToya. It was funny -- at Notre Dame, most of my friends were in the Honors Program with me, and (with the exception of my girls), I never quite felt like I was up to speed with them all. There were a few souls with whom I truly felt completely comfortable, but a lot of time, I felt just one step less intelligent than everyone, and once in awhile, conversations would devolve into obvious attempts to decide who was really "the smartest." For example, the oh-so-dreaded "What other schools were you accepted to?" conversation. Like it mattered that you got into Yale or Harvard or...anywhere else. We were all at Notre Dame together, and I found that kind of conversation vaguely annoying, like we still had something to prove. I also had significantly less tolerance for arguments about hypothetical and/or abstract ideas or theories than the other HP kids. They could debate philosophical and theological stuff for hours, and it bored me after the first, oh, 25 minutes or so. I loved the depth of conversation, but not so much the refusing to budge and redundant nature of them. Sometimes, it just seemed like mental masturbation, a way of pointing out how "deep" and "insightful" people thought themselves to be.

Interestingly, I don't feel like I have to prove anything here. The graduate students (and the law students) have such different backgrounds, there's no point in comparing, and that's nice. There's a certain level of intelligence assumed, because unmotivated people don't choose to do graduate work, but people don't try to compare experiences, they share them. When I talk to the other grad students, even the physics doctoral students, they're just people and we're just chatting, not trying to one-up each other.

I don't want to give the impression that ND was bad -- it wasn't, and I loved it, and my HP friends were my center there. It's just that this is refreshing, and I feel much more comfortable much more quickly. I wonder if it's simply a matter of everyone's maturity. It's amazing what a few years can do.