Friday, September 28, 2007

Encore

I found out from my boss that after the students left tutoring, they went to their night class. 13 of them, all from one sport, in the same basic writing course. On the best of days, they are rambunctious.

On this day, one of them went in without a shirt on. Just walked into the classroom barechested. He must have meandered through the entire classroom building this way until the professor asked him to please clothe himself. This is the same student who often comes for tutoring dressed in a sort of Superman tube top midriff shirt thingy. What the hell is wrong with him?

Then, his teammate started periodically spitting grapes. This is a seminar table, where they sit in a circle. And this kid was spitting grapes across the room. Grapes! When asked why, he said they were very sugary and he felt wound up.

Now, my boss tells me that I have to imagine them not as babies but as 18 year old boys, which amounts to the same thing. What would happen, she asks me to think, if 13 members of the same fraternity were in one class. I suppose I can imagine similar shenanigans. But I would shudder as a parent to think my son had grown into the type of man (because when you are in college you are a man, let's face it) who walks around with no shirt or spits grapes at his classmates.

What are we doing in society when we revere athletes to the point where they aren't allowed to develop as normal people? They are walking around naked and spitting grapes! Grapes!

2 comments:

Emily said...

The correct phrase is "sense of entitlement"

Also, the advisor in the athletics department who scheduled them and/or let them pick to be all in the same class isn't blameless...

Valtastic said...

Heyyy.. It's not all athletes... but it's male athelets that were only shown they were superb athletes and that's all that mattered in life... it's the parents fault for not teaching them how to be respectful and have a sense of humility...

And to Emily's point.. we never picked to be in the same courses but since we have practice time/lift times at the same time it narrows down when and what classes you can take. I once had a class with 8 swimmers.. believe me I was around them enough I didn't need to be in class with them...