Undercover

When I'm at school, I often feel like I am an undercover cop of sorts. While there are some older people like me (and some MUCH older I'm happy to say... like gray haired and all), the majority are obviously those young naives in their late teens early twenties. One girl is a returning student and at 24 she's considered "old." Apparently I used to be old, but am now ancient. I try not to judge. Because I have stories of where that has gotten me. But my goodness. That life is so different from mine, that I truly feel like I am spying on them and their culture.

Their early morning complaints of having to drag themselves out of bed for a 9am class make me giggle, because I refuse to be enraged that 6am is the norm for me. The roommate issues crack me up. I hear friends gathered reading texts from a fellow roommate and guffawing over her response that she did wash the dishes. The problems, the arguments and the opinion that I am so lucky not to have a roommate just about kill me. Um, I live with 5 other people... though we do have the dishes pretty much figured out by now. The parties, the drinking, the study group plans (do they actually study at these things now?), the complimenting on clothing and jewlery and raving about going shopping together, the learning how to spend money and then how to tell Mom and Dad that the credit card has a whopping $430 on it, but that's $430 that they don't have... all these things leave me shaking my head, smiling, and sometimes (rarely) making little comments that are meant to be barely heard. Sometimes I do speak out. Somebody has to. I'll share THAT story another time.

There is one thing that my undercover experience has found that doesn't make me smile. The blatant cheating. It happens in class, but most of it happens outside of class. The pure excitement some of these students have in passing around quizzes, tests and assignments is disgusting. Complete file folders. I'm thinking that if they used this organizational sophistication in their own studies, they could do just fine... but instead I'm appalled to say that there is a lot of memorization of pure answers. As I spend hours doing my homework and studying, it seems hardly fair. I remember once in high school where I caught wind of being able to purchase a copy of our law final from someone. Our teacher, part-time lawyer, part-time teacher, was viewed as sort of a ditz and someone basically went into her office to speak with her and while talking took a copy of the exam on her desk and then copied and distributed - and made a small fortune doing so. I happened to work with this teacher/lawyer in some other capacities and organizations as well, and adored her. I was torn. But eventually wrote her a note letting her know what was going on. I didn't sign it, but somehow she knew it was me. This "ditzy" teacher created a whole new exam for the class, and I felt great joy in hearing the groans around me as the students realized this expensive fact.

I haven't seen any "files" going around for the specific classes I am currently taking. So no reporting has been done. Yes, I would most certainly snitch if I could. But still, it makes me mad. It's no longer survival of the fittest. Has it ever been?