There are a lot of things I really love about Seattle. For the most part the people are pretty great, but I'm realizing that they can be really snobby too. I don't know if it's the money, or the "cultural awareness" of the city, or the fact that everyone is "educated" that makes people feel like it's okay to just write off other people as being too stupid to "deal with" or "explain things to." But that seems to be the case for many people, most ironically among people who have spent the most time "learning" about the world.

I know this all feels a bit non-sequitur...I don't really want to dish here on people that I have class with. It's just disappointing that ignorance seems to exist on both sides of the spectrum of educated people (and probably throughout the scope as well), and isn't just an "ignorant Southern thing" like people seem to think.

Most disappointing is that since I've been here, I've just gotten more and more frustrated by school, and not doing as well as I want, and feeling like I'm "not getting it," when up until now, I was always one of the people who GOT it. And I thought maybe I was suffering from a "big fish in a small pond to small fish in big pond" scenario. But now I sort of feel like what I wasn't "getting" was more along the lines of cultural and class difference, and the sense of entitlement that all my peers are apparently sharing about how the world "really" works and how they see other people. I definitely stand outside of that, but now I'm starting to see that may not be a bad thing.

I'm not trying to give myself too much credit...it's just that after three and a half quarters of getting academically beat up every day, it's a relief to finally get a chance to pick my head up long enough to get my bearings.