Now if you've been reading this blog at all regularly, you will probably remember how little I enjoy
1. getting dressing up
2. heading downtown
3. behaving the way shmancy clubs like people to behave
because I'd much rather wear jeans, hang around the house, and burp and fart as much as I want.
Not to mention that before the dinner I met with someone from the
Now while I had her in a receptive mood, i.e., before I told her I had no money, I was quite eloquent on my determination not to listen to a fucking word about my college's new engineering program or my college's new $60 million science building.
They are so proud of these things, and they won't stop bragging about them. And I don't give a shit and want them to shut up.
First of all, I don't really care what they're doing now. Hey, I got my B.A. and apres moi, le deluge, which is kind of a stupid way of putting it because my B.A. isn't in French, but whatever.
I'm also kind of ticked off over what I consider to be a colossally unfair allocation of assets. This whole engineering/science shtick is being taken advantage of by a minuscule amount of students. In the past four years they have graduated 100 Engineering majors. Twenty-five a year. Meanwhile the vast majority of students are still majoring in Government, English, Psychology, and Art History. Hello? It's a woman's college.
I can't help feeling a little resentful that wads of money are being spent on a tiny number of students. Even though I know that donors are picking up the cost, and anyway, English majors are way more cost effective than Engineers. We are the cheapest dates ever. (And yes, I probably do mean this in every way.) I mean, shit, nowadays we even have Project Gutenberg, so you don't even have to buy us books. We can get all the old stuff on line for free.
But anyway, for a variety of reasons I want people to shut the fuck up about engineering programs and talk about something interesting, instead. Like John Keats.
Well, my friend had place cards for the dinner. A classmate of mine and I went into the dining room to scope out where people were sitting. And guess where my pal placed me?
NEXT TO THE PRESIDENT.
And guess what the president wanted to talk about?
THE NEW ENGINEERING PROGRAM AND THE SCIENCE BUILDING.
OK, kids, this is where you learn something from the socially adept likes of Poppy Buxom. My solution to situations where people insist on boring me comatose about my college is to
1. cut my food into minuscule bites roughly proportionate to the percentage of students who are majoring in Engineering, and to
2. drink wine proportionate to the number of students who are majoring in the Humanities.
Which meant that dinner was low on protein and high on ethanol. Which is the way I like it.
You put that "cheap dates" thing just to tweak me for making the English Dept. my personal stomping grounds, didn't you?
ReplyDelete-J.
I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteAs an alumna of that there college with a double major in two humanities fields, I am avoiding the presidential visit also too. I'm all for giving women more opportunities in science -- my mother would have been a geologist if her university would have let her, but they refused to accommodate a woman on their required field work. But I grew up in a family of engineers and you can't make me listen to any more engineering talk. Perhaps engineering is more useful than literature (although I'm not even convinced of that entirely), but it's definitely not more interesting. At least not to me.
ReplyDeleteI likey the way you drinkey... uhm, I mean "thinkey!"
ReplyDeleteI hate it when the university people call here for hub trying to get more money. And it's always some poor unfortunate underclassmen who have no idea what they are *volunteering* for when they throw their hat in to *do something good for the school*. It makes me glad we don't live anywhere near close enough to have to meet the fund raisers face to face. It's hard enough to get him to tell them *sorry, not this time* on the phone. He would just totally cave if they were in front of him.
ReplyDeletePoppy, I heart you.
ReplyDeleteI'm so going to try this at next week's "Executive Leadership Pow-wow thingie shindig".
ReplyDeleteMy Oldest is a freshman this year. He was out of state at school less then 5, FIVE, 1-2-3-4-5 WEEKS when my phone rang. A young and peppy man gave me his spiel about what level of donor I would like to become and could they count on my annual pledge
ReplyDeleteHad hard time not commenting that I thought my TWENTY NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS(!) 29,000(!) 10+t10+9(!) was already a rather substantial donation. And that figure does not include money GIVEN to said child for his existence, frat fees,CASES of bottled water,outfitting the door room (OK, that was kinda fun) trips home,yearly rent for the dorm room 'let's cook AND keep all that bottled water cold WAVEORATER' student association fees etc,. I actually felt guilty saying perhaps not this year.
I always felt that the FBI Missing Person Unit simply needs to have a College Alumni Fund Raiser on staff. Cuz no matter where you go or what you do..THEY WILL FIND YOU. That envelope will appear, that phone will ring. They always get their man. Give me a week. THEY KNOW WHERE JIMMY HOFFA IS AND HE HASN'T SENT IN HIS DAMN CHECK!