Saturday 12 May 2012

On students, hipsters and caffeine addictions

So, I have been a Uni student for one and a half years now, a little more maybe and yesterday I realized how surreal this world that students live in actually is. How come, you might ask. Well...

Yesterday I went out for a drink with some friends of mine. First of all: Yes, we do go out on Thursday nights and yes, I do have Uni on Fridays... Guess where I am right now. But back to topic. We sat in the outside area of a cocktail bar, chatted, discussed the best way of how to say "It's time to drink" in latin. Nunc bibendum est or Nunc est bibendum, it's really a matter of style, not of grammar. In the middle of this discussion I realized how weird this whole situation actually was. Even when we go out we talk about stuff that would put big question marks in other people's faces. With Uni students it is simply different. Everyone in Uni is smart (at least on an interlectual level) and sometimes we aren't even aware of that fact. We discuss politics on a pretty high level in our free time, analyse why we like or do not like Kant while drinking mojitos and think of how one can get rid of that low /l/ in their accent that sounds so unbelievably stupid when one sings "Defying Gravity". Gosh, that all sounds extremely crazy, right?

The discussion about the latin drinking phrase ended in one of my friends only speaking latin for about 10 minutes, by the way. To spice things up, we started to throw in French, Spanish, English and Italian phrases, as well as some Japanese. My mother speaks English, Spanish and French as well so we sometimes say basic phrases in one of those languges, our personal joke between each other is "Donde estan mis gafas?" (Where are my glasses?) because she always loses them and runs around the house asking that question again and again.

Nearly all of my friends are Uni students so I sometimes forget that this form of conversation and interlect isn't the standard. When I quote Kant's idea of enlightenment when I am not around Uni students I get weird looks and I always have to remind myself not to show my consternation to people when they say that they are not fluent in English because it is so normal for me that people speak various languages and have a basic understanding of philosophy, literature (Can you believe that some people do not know who Oscar Wilde is?), history and many, many other things.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think that I know everything. I do not expect people to know everything. I couldn't build a shelf if it was for my life and maths has always been an arsehole to me. I just enjoy being around smart people and listen to them, learn from them and share my thoughts with them. When my friend speaks latin, for example, my knowledge of that language increases and is being influenced and when I tell people why we have the calendar that we use today and how it was influenced by Cesar and Pope Gregory XIII. it maybe changes peoples' idea of time and standards. I think that is pretty cool.

Another thing I have noticed lately is the fact that we Uni students run on caffeine. Everyone drinks coffee here. Everyone. All the time. Or Club Mate ( A cold, tea based drink with caffeine that has become THE hipster drink. I love it.).
Before coming to university and during my first semester I always thought that the caffeine myth is just a stereotype concerning Uni students. Stupid, stupid me. It is one of those clichées that exsist because they're true. We seriously do drink stuff with caffeine in it all the time.
Why, you might ask. Well, I believe the reason for that is a combination of studying too hard (something that certainly isn't true for me), working part time, sleeping too little (true!) and drinking too much. Oh and it's a self-fullfilling prophecy, of course.

Something else that I find very funny about us students is that many of us try to hold up the reputation of not being cool. We want to be unique, not following the mainstream and listen to bands that nobody else knows. So basically we're just a bunch of hipsters. Student equals hipster, at least most of the time. That sounds weird in the first time but when you think of it, it really makes sense. University students are like pupils but with IDs and more money, we don't really have any responsibilities, we can experiment with style and music because we don't have a reputation to preserve. We don't have to look serious for a job, we just sit in our classes and listen to the professors; listening works fine with pink hair and skinny jeans.

Have you noticed changes in your life since you have entered Uni/ left school?

Have a great day,

The Countess


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