Ch- Ch- Ch- CHANGER

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU READ CAMUS AND SARTRE IN THE ORIGINAL IN AN UNIRONIC WAY. DON'T BE LIKE ME KIDS.

france, has a very dichotomous way of doing things, and it's either very dark and serious, or absolutely silly. it's raining outside, and i'm feeling existential.

I'm not saying I'm starting to hate americans, specifically the ones within close proximity to myself, but they're not giving me any reason to like them.

I'd thought, pre- departure, that I was most afraid of changing. Mostly because I like this self that I've done well to cultivate, harvest, and other such agricultural metaphors, over my past few collegiate years. I didn't want to be one of those kids who studied abroad and then could do nothing but long for THE CONTINENT. I'm not saying that's how things are turning out, but they might be working themselves in a way that Mr. Bowie suggested.

Ideologically, there isn't much to look forward to, barring the small group of smart kids i know and love, when i go back to geneseo. the kids just don't care, or know that they should care, about themselves, and that the idea of individual rights doesn't mean you have the liberty to make an ass of yourself participating in PSC die-ins or that being part of a group on campus means that your radical nature is tied inextricably with SA funding, but that there are bigger things that not even the Josh Hymans of the world can comprehend, that need to be addressed in terms of student rights. OR in a marginal superficial way, as Greg put it on the phone last night, it seems as if all of the student activism on campus is just a performance, no better than the sexually explicit for no reason Brodies, the "i use a poetry voice" chick english majors, ALL of the i'm a vapid liberal liberals, and we not even crossing unto the social groups with which i have no general affiliations. sorry ZBXi.

the idea of state school being the best that social programs for students has to offer, is pretty depressing to me. that our fabulous pre-natal ivy league state academy of wonderment is so hung up on the fact that it's the little public school that tried, is again, just depressing.

and that the kids don't care...

there is an indescribable glass ceiling created in geneseo i think because the kids think that they've fallen short in some way. the rochester kids did get their ivy league of the greater rochester area, but when you compare geneseo to the effing competition (gym teachers at brockport?) i can't see how their stoked-ness about being a geneseoaaan is really justified. plus they kick themselves beacause they never left home, and after spending four years partying in our fave post industrial city that never was, i think there's some serious self-kicking going on.

the rest of us? couldn't get into the private schools we wanted (me) or our parents wouldn't be able to afford them even if we did get in (hypothetical me). a lot of kids i know, myself included, spend their geneseo years thinking they're the top of the pops, cos they are smart and different, but honestly, it ain't too much of a fucking achievement when people assemble in a group called PIGS in a completely unironic way.

COMPLACENCY again. We all could've done better I think, and we all could continue to do better, but my vague idea that this middle class ennui/laziness perpetuates, and few do something really cool at geneseo.

observations from afar, and self- criticism from much closer.