I remember it was 6:30 on a Monday morning, spring semester my 4th year at the University of Virginia. I was drinking a Budweiser and eating a plate of Mexican food at the La Hacienda in Charlottesville. I had been to the Odyssey, a black nightclub the night before and stayed up all night boozing and carousing with my friends. Yes, it was just like the Dexter Lake Club, but white fraternity boys were welcome. About the time I finished my second beer, a sudden epiphanic feeling came over me. “I have to get the hell out of Charlottesville , this was no way to live, it was time to move on.”
A few weeks later it was graduation day, and again I had stayed up all night and surely smelled of stale cigarettes and bourbon. I’m not a believer in graduation ceremonies, one is supposed to graduate, so why celebrate something that one is supposed to do? Then the unexpected happened. My godfather, Tayloe Murphy spotted me and walked across “the Lawn,” earnestly shook my hand, and in his rich mellifluous Tidewater Virginia accent said “Robbie (pronounced ‘rob-baaay’), I’m so proud of you.” He drove 3 hours that morning just to say those words. I never felt so guilty in my life. I thought to myself, “Tayloe, do you have any idea what I’ve been doing the last 4 years?”
I wouldn’t trade my time at the University of Virginia for anything, but I think I can be honest about my experience. Virginia was like going to summer camp for 4 years where the main activity was being a drunken Visigoth, breaking things, chasing women, discharging firearms, nekidness and playing childish games like “spud” and putt-putt. I still cannot believe that my father paid for all this. The return on investment was great friends and relationships with people across the country and memories galore. After graduating, I felt like I could drive anywhere in the United States and spend the night at one of my friends’ houses. I remember my first year out of school going to a New Year’s Eve party in New York. There must have been 1,000 people there, graduates of several Virginia schools, Carolina, Princeton, Penn and various other guests. I remember knowing practically everyone there. One of my friends had an aunt who owned a unit at the Dakota. We stayed there, everything came so easy. At that age, a bunch of us would hop in the car and drive almost anywhere, Washington, Atlanta, Louisville, New York, usually headed to a debutante party or black-tie affair. Often, we would go somewhere on the spur of the moment and just throw a tux and white dinner jacket in the car, thinking that we would likely get invited to some shindig that required such apparel.
Were we entitled little shits? ABSOLUTELY. Does an elite university create entitled little shits? As Sarah Palin would say “you betcha.” When I read Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, I remember thinking what a bunch of insufferable little punks the fraternity boys in the book were, not knowing he used my fraternity at Virginia for his literary inspiration.
This social elitism extended to academic elitism. I’m a big believer in the liberal arts and along with most of my fraternity brothers, we were in the College of Arts and Sciences. At times, I went weeks without going to class, and if I did, it was because I wanted to get in good with some girl who had great penmanship and was known to be an excellent note taker, so when mid-terms or finals came around, I could copy her notes to know what the class was about. Since Virginia had one of the most discriminating admissions policies in the country and was always highly rated by all the pseudo-intellectual publications, naturally many of us felt intellectually superior to students at almost all other schools. In more rudimentary vernacular, this is called believing your own bullshit. I remember being told my 3rd year that Virginia had the #1 English department in the country and its history department was “in the top 5.” These were the courses I took. Oh, the hubris! The sneering elitism! The smugness that enveloped me!
Luckily, I was soon rescued from my delusions, starting with my father. I respected my father and wanted his respect. Over Christmas vacation my 4th year, I was invited to go duck hunting in Franklin, Virginia. I had just smashed up another car a couple nights before and when I “told” my old man I was going to take one of the spare cars we had, he simply said “take the bus.” I got the message; Dad thinks I am getting too big for my britches. Immediately, I started to change. After graduation, I found myself in law school at the University of Richmond. There were students there from all sorts of non-elite schools and let me tell you they were much better prepared than I was. Furthermore, Richmond was a real school. They didn’t play. Students would read the footnotes to cases, then research the footnotes, and research the foot-noted footnotes. Holy shit! I was shocked. 25% of the incoming class would drop out or flunk out within a few months. No one was coddled, there were no cute puppies in “safe place” therapy rooms.
While I didn’t study at the University of Virginia, I was exposed to ideas, and after graduation was quite earnest and industrious in wanting to learn more about what I ignored in college. Indeed, the University of Virginia opened my eyes to what I didn’t know. I was embarrassed not to know what I felt I should have known. I think I was able to float by in college because I come from a family that loves to discuss ideas. To this day, I am on a text feed with my three brothers and all of our sons, and my phone begins to beep at 6 am and doesn’t stop until midnight with opinions on current events, economics, history, theology and of course how crazy women are. Needless to say, my experiences have given me perspective on learning and aren’t you lucky, I plan to share them with you in this and subsequent articles.
Despite being drunk most of my 4 years in Charlottesville, I was able to sober up for a few days, cram, take the midterm or final and get a decent grade. Thus, I can remember to this day all the courses I took and what the general themes were about. Some of my professors were highly esteemed in academia, thought to be the best and brightest in the nation. As I look back, even the really good ones weren’t any smarter, more learned or more knowledgeable in their subject matter than hundreds of people I know who have no PHDs, but are just intellectually curious and love to learn. The big difference between these people and the town and gown crowd is that these people have real jobs in the real world and are not in a bubble where people feel they must subscribe to the current groupthink to be accepted, both socially and professionally. I’ve come to realize that no amount of learning is of much value unless it is filtered through practical experiences.
Every day, for all my adult life, I have gotten up really early and treated myself to coffee at a coffee shop. Before long friendships are made and a circle of interesting people regularly meet to discuss every topic under the sun. I have been blown away by the acute minds, the sheer knowledge and articulate communication skills of ordinary people chatting it up before they go to work in the morning. I run into these types all day long. They are much more interesting and knowledgeable than the academics I know. I have been in bible studies and come across ordinary men and women who know much more about theology than clerics who went to fancy seminaries. Not all of these learned and interesting people went to fancy liberal arts colleges, some are auto mechanics, carpenters and other trades.
I’m a recovering elitist. I got out of the cult at 22. Being “educated” means nothing. Being learned is something quite different, and in general all one needs to do is have a curious mind, read books and talk to smart people who I might add have real jobs not dependent on outside funding. This cost virtually nothing and is a threat to the stuffy elitist class because it threatens their self-worth, indeed their whole existence. Always follow the money. Billions of dollars are at stake. In my next few articles, I will outline what has worked for centuries, why much of the university system is not just a joke, but a scam and what can be done to break out of the paradigm that one needs to be “educated” a certain way or cannot achieve knowledge. The political/educrat class has America by the balls, but dear reader, you have me, like Moses to lead us out of slavery and into the land of milk and honey.
Stay tuned.
