This is gonna be sort of a stream of consciousness post (some thoughts I’ve had with no real direction), so bear with me.
There’s a tremendous age gap at work among the employees. There’s two girls that are 19, then me (23), a guy who’s 25, and another girl who’s 27.
Then the next youngest person above her is 52. And there are four others between the ages of 52 and 65. But this post is basically about the two 19-year-olds.
Now as I talk about this, I’m going to try my best to not sound like an arrogant ass, but I’m the only one there with a college degree and they’re really not used to having someone of my intelligence level among their ranks. And it’s not just book smarts, either. Sometimes some of the general (and often what I think of as basic) cultural knowledge that I have surprises them. More than that, even.
Like today, my boss was totally shocked that I had even heard of The Graduate, let alone seen it. I mean, it literally knocked him backwards.
This is where I get a little mean: The other young people that I work with—the 19-year-old girls whom they’ve worked with for 3 years already—are soignorant. I mean, incredibly so. And I don’t mean just intelligence level; I’m talking about stuff that all my life I’ve considered to be basic cultural/world knowledge (basic history, etc.). It’s really appalling to me sometimes. Especially because these two girls are in college right now and I swear to god they’re more ignorant than a lot of the kids I tutor (who are in elementary school). A lot of it, I’m learning, stems from their total and utter self-centeredness, but that’s going off on a whole other tangent.
And the older people are so used to those two girls that they just assume that all kids our age are just as ignorant and unaware of the world around them. So when I come along and I can do addition in my head (yes, they can’t do it), and I can point out Russia on a map, and I’ve seen movies like The Graduate and I have a genuine interest in… anything. Anything that doesn’t have to do with myself.
It’s really strange being in this environment. Honestly, it’s completely new to me, and sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. In St. Louis, I went to a private, college preparatory high school, so as an adolescent I grew and developed surrounded by really smart people who were actually thrilled by the pursuit of knowledge. And it was the same for college, when I went to Washington University.
Here’s one of the most interesting changes from my life in St. Louis to my life in LA: In St. Louis, whenever I met new people I would inevitably tell them that I was a student at Wash. U., and because it’s one of the very top schools in the country, everyone in St. Louis knows the school and I would be instantly recognized/judged/categorized in their minds as a person of high intelligence. In LA, nobody has heard of Wash U. Most people here don’t even know where St. Louis is. So if I tell someone here where I went to school, unless they’re from St. Louis or somewhere nearby, it means absolutely zilch to them. It’s without a doubt been the most humbling experience of my life. I went from being instantly recognized as the cream of the crop, to being just like every other asshole out there.
It’s good to be away from that, because the truth is I am just like every other asshole out there—I always was—because I got so many privileges and so much recognition in St. Louis simply because of my school. Here, I get nothing. I have to work to earn people’s respect or recognition. Not that I didn’t work hard at school, but it’s a very, very different experience. It’s been a shock to the system, but it’s definitely brought me into reality in a way that I would have never understood had I stayed in St. Louis. Honestly, I often miss that look that I would get from people after telling them where I go to school. That look that says “well, aren’t you special” and I would say to myself “yes, yes I am.”
So anyways, what was I talking about before? The girls at work. Yeah.
I lost my momentum, but you get the idea. I hope I didn’t come off as a holier-than-thou kinda prick, but really It’s just shocking to me every single day, the level of ignorance of these girls I work with. On the other hand, though, who the hell am I? Cuz even with my college degree, I’m still stuck working this shitty retail job. So am I much better than them? Ugh, I hope the answer is “yes.”
I could really go on and on about the things that frustrate me about these two girls, but I won’t (at least, not tonight).
Basically, I gotta get out of this job and into an environment that’s better suited for me.
