The more I think about it, the more I want to attend Rhodes. Besides the fact that the campus is absolutely beautiful (all the buildings are done in a Gothic sort of style, with ivy climbing up multi-colored bricks and archways), it seems like a place where I might fit in. Small classes, friendly professors, nice students. Doubtless I'll run into some of that intellectual snobbery that I so despise, but that kind of thing is a given at a place like Rhodes. You may be wondering how I define intellectual snobbery (or you may just be wondering why I'm talking about something as boring as what college I want to attend as opposed to typing up Claris).

Regardless, I think of it thusly--an intellectual snob is a person who judges another person based entirely on his or her academic standing. Grades, test scores, class rank, whatever you can think of to define a person's academic career. The higher the numbers (or in terms of class rank, the lower), the better. I hate this. A person's worth is not determined by a number on a piece of a paper or a score on a report card. Half the time those things don't even properly determine real intelligence! Anyone who works hard can make good grades. You don't have to be smart to do well in school, you just have to be focused. I hate it when people think they're better than everyone else just because they did well on a test or in a class. I'm not trying to disparage achievement here, but I'm sure you all know what I mean. That person who does well in everything and feels the need to flaunt it, or just simply speaks as if the entire population is a worm beneath his feet because their scores aren't perfect. There's a boy at our school who is number one in the class and makes phenomenal grades, besides being involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities. But he is one of the nicest people ever. He never acts like he's better, he never makes people with lesser grades feel stupid. His type is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the type who sneers at people with lower GPAs and uses report cards as a measuring stick of human worth. There are a lot of those at my school, and I want to smack them in the face every time I pass them in the hallway.

Of course, this may just be bitterness. I only have a 3.5/4.0 G.P.A. after all.