Sit down and shut up!

Dear Pretentious Grad Student,

Hi! I'm the guy who sits behind you in class. You know that odd crunching noise you hear every time you speak? Yeah, that's me griding my teeth.

I know you look down on me because I rarely speak in class. I know you think I have nothing to add to what you say. And you're right, I don't.

Because what you say is stupid.

You know that professor you told us you worked with at Moderately-Prestigious University? The one whose name you've now said in class 16 times? Nobody's ever heard of him. Yeah, he wrote some papers. Guess what? That's what professors do. I've written some papers too. One of my favorites is a particularly poignant one entitled "What I Want for Cristmas is Peece." I wrote in the 1st grade. My mom showed it to her co-workers, which probably means that more people have read my paper than your professor's.

What's that? You did a workshop with , where you learned to use your bodies as tools to fight oppression? That's great. I'm a little fuzzy on how it relates to our discussion of iambic pentameter, but still... great for you. How about you continue to tell us about the workshop while I take a little brain nap and think about that chick from Lost sunbathing?

I'm not staring at my pencil, by the way, because I'm retarded. I'm staring at it because I'm wondering if the graphite in the tip is strong enough to make it through my eye and into my temporal lobe. I'm going to try it in a few minutes. Possibly sooner if you encourage us to "unpack this issue" one more time.

On a side note, the word you're looking for is "gravitate." People gravitate towards certain trends and pretty rarely levitate towards them. Levitation would be more interesting, sure. And maybe, if that's really what you were actually talking about, I could focus for more than 1.73 seconds on what you're saying, and maybe ask for a little of what you're smoking after class. But I'm reasonably sure that's not the word you want. Keep using it, though - I'm enjoying the laugh.

I honestly do know that it's rude of me to roll my eyes every time your mouth opens. Forgive me; its an autonomic response to complete bullshit. Usually, I try to doodle stick figures in various inappropriate poses so that my eyes are averted when this unfortunate reflex occurs, but sometimes I take a break from my erotic/anorexic masterpiece to look up, and that's always the moment at which you choose to speak.

Or maybe you're just always talking.

Speaking of which, are you still talking? Feels like you've been pontificating since roughly, oh, 1994. I tune in every once in a while to pluck some tidbit with which to mock you mercilessly later, but even this pasttime is losing its joy. Plus, since I paid $1000/credit, I'm sort of hoping that the professor will get a chance to speak this class period. Or semester, come to that.

Love,Pip