College Students are Stupid

Zeke Witter
Undergraduate/Creative Writing


I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Through many a sleepless night I've wondered at, and lamented, the ignorance of an enormous portion of my peers. I can't give up hope that this is a university; this is higher education; this is where the smart people are, but regardless of my misguided optimism, I'm constantly bombarded with examples of the stupidity of those around me.

You know these people. All you have to do is walk by the Pickle on a Friday night or attend just about any house party in Eau Claire that has a keg. I know these people quite well. Through many a drunken conversation I've listened with patience and open-mindedness, ever hopeful that this straight-brim-wearing brohammer (or the female equivalent) has some redeeming quality—something interesting to say—but every single time my patience is rewarded with what would better be described as a thick fart squeezing out of a fat girl's ass.

These are the people who won't read or even be aware of this article. They're the people whose deepest intellectual conversations about God consist of (and this is quoted from one such moron), “But bro, think about this...like...there are like a million other universes, so how could there not be a God?” They're the people who constantly bitch about how much they hate reading and homework and writing papers. They're more preoccupied with misusing the word “your” on facebook or discussing at length who's going to win the next MMA fight and why. They compare the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas to a Taylor Swift song. They love perpetuating idiocy and they hate learning, and yet they are my college-level peers.

Am I arrogant for thinking I'm miles above and beyond these dimwitted heaps of bone and flesh? Am I an asshole for thinking they're closer to having a nerve net than a human brain? Maybe it's a shortcoming of public education, or maybe the quality of universities has slipped due to an over saturation of sub-standard students. Maybe I'm just at the wrong university and I should have tried harder in high school, or perhaps I'll find what I'm looking for in grad school.

Considering you generally have to have some sort of post-secondary education to have a chance at that two-story house in the suburbs you want so badly, I feel like everyone just goes to college because it's the thing to do. I don't know what the problem is, but there are people here that I feel just don't belong.

I know this is an exercise in futility. I can't really pinpoint the problem or suggest a proper solution without going into hundreds of tangents. This was a rant, but a justified one at least. I guess I'm just looking for someone to make sense of it for me.

That said, I know it's not all bad. There are plenty of intelligent people here, most certainly. You can tell who they are just by looking them in the eye and seeing that their minds aren't devoid of thought. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Collin Hawkins for his contribution to vol. 7, issue 2 of Flip Side, “If a Tree Falls on Campus.” Thank you, Collin, for reminding me that there is a light at the end of this hollowed-out, idiot-infested log.