As Columbia’s class of 2008 nears graduation, I’m starting to face the possibility of taking their place, becoming a senior myself, being older than the rest of the undergraduate population. It’s really quite terrifying–I liked having the cushion of a few years between me and adulthood.
So with that in mind, I’m not sure if the students at UCT really feel younger than students at Columbia, or if I’m just being patronizing in my advancing years. Sitting for a few hours in Leslie Social Science, the main student center, I was struck by the pronounced middle schoolish atmosphere, with people sitting around tables doing nothing in particular, backpacks strewn around haphazardly. I wonder if it may be due to UCT’s upper-than-average class student body, of whom perhaps not much has been expected. From what I know of the primary education system, you either go to a posh private school with pleated skirts and sport coats and the whole bit (in which case one’s maturity might not catch up with the sudden freedom of college) or an underfunded public school ill-equipped to prepare students for higher education. Either way, they come out still with the callow detachment of children-not-yet-adults.
It’s not a totalizing sense; I’ve certainly met quite a few of the sophisticated going-places type. And again, it’s possible I’m just withering into my gnomish 20s. I guess I’ll know when Columbia’s class of 2011 starts running around underfoot.
