Michigan seems like a dream to me now

The whole day in Ann Arbor, I was dealing with smug students--they took up all the plug-in spots at the Internet cafe to read or take naps, they were rude to me when I asked for help in stores, and they seemed generally intolerant of anyone not in khaki shorts and a sweatshirt. (Argh... I hate college students.)

At the reading, most of the audience was between the ages of 18 and 21. I was outside the whole time, peddling the wares, and the fact that I was standing behind a table + my age put me in a position of apparent authority b/c they kept asking me things like

how long will this last?
can I leave and come back?
can I go in now?

I found myself tempted to mess with people over the last question, guarding the door and choreographing their entrances. This reminds me that students still tend to defer to authority, even though they'll complain about it constantly. (I love college students.)

After the reading we went to Baps, a basement bar that "looks like a dentist office" (according to the guy who invited us there). Their entire food menu consisted of Goldfish, so I snuck across the street to the Fleetwood Diner, where I sat at the lunch counter and enjoyed a tuna melt and a glass of milk. The waitress was leisurely smoking and grousing to a yellow-orange-haired girl at the end of the bar about her woman studies classes ("I'm trying to get into grad school; I need a rigorous academic program; it's heartbreaking me, it's absolutely heartbreaking me.") And this reminds me of another thing I love about college students, the absolute vision of a hopeful future, and the complete indignation toward anyone who would get in the way. When I paid, I finally got a good look at her face, black eyelined and completely wrinkle free. I was looking at someone from another universe, one I can't inhabit but can appreciate from a distance, sometimes even without condescension. (Love KOs hate every time.)

When I got back to Baps, our local helper introduced me to Julia, a first-year MFA student in her second week who was generous and flexible enough to let a total stranger enjoy her comfy couch--anything for a writer, she said, and I felt sad to tell her I was just an intern, and that I hadn't read.