first whole-hall meeting tonight. the more i think about it, the weirder and more fragmented swat culture seems. this is mainly because pittenger is such a prime example of swat culture clash. pitt generally houses somewhat social, lefty upperclass people who are also artistic in some way---and eighteen freshmen who are mostly athletes and members of decidedly...willetsian...social orders.

[Broad Generalization Alert]

it has always seemed to me that the culture of people who place themselves in the "athlete" social category (come on now, you know what i mean), is a bit different from that of other people at swat. these are social relatives of the folks i couldn't deal with in high school: they may have been nice surface-wise--depending upon who you were--but were too concerned with whatever aspect of their images to actually learn about other people. now, the frosh in this building are great people, but this aspect of their collective personality does no one any good.

i'm trying to think of a nice name for this group--i know that "jocks" or "preps" or whatever it was for me five years ago is actually going to sound derogatory, and i'm looking to describe rather than insult these kids. the culture is so distinctive; i wish i could understand it. but i'm probably prevented from doing so by my extremely stunted vision of what it involves: lots of appearance talk, intense gender norms, devotion to "conventionally cool" forms of social interaction. so...unlike in ML last year, many pitt frosh don't really care that i baked cookies for the first hall meeting or that it's important to me that they show up, because hall life doesn't seem like an important element of their college experience.

fair enough--but for me this is a huge departure. swatties, in my mind, are "supposed to be" goofy, enthusiastic kids who are up for anything, rather than later-adolescent eye-rollers. sometimes on my hall i feel as beleaguered as a junior high teacher trying to drum up excitement for a school event. the moral of the story, i guess, is this thought: people with dorkiness phobias run an elevated risk of being, and appearing, mean and boring. at least my cheesily overenthusiastic squareness means i get to have more fun.