UVa Is Such a Joke

I went to UVa because it was cheap and I could pay for it myself, but as they say you get what you pay for.  When I was a freshman, I was forced to take an idiotic First-Year Seminar on "Community in America."  The professor was a stolid, non-intellectual type who specialized in colonial US history but almost in an antiquarian sense.  He was actually really impressed by the stereotypical overachieving UVa undergrad types - you know, dumb stuff like U Guides and living on the Lawn.

The seminar was an obvious setup designed to promote small-minded anti-intellectual boosterism and Babbitry in retaliation for my reasonable disdain for my parents' thoroughgoing bigotry and racism.  I had already read Faulkner, not to mention Sinclair Lewis, so I was reasonably unimpressed.  The only thing we read that was useful was Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," which had a similar pessimistic view of such environs.  We actually had to read and write an essay on Garrison Keillor's middlebrow fave Lake Wobegon Days.  My essay was characterized by Innes as an "evisceration," but he had to give me an A because it was completely accurate.  

The main thing I learned from the experience was to never get advice on course selection from a UVa professor.

Oh, and Innes's annoying daughter apparently has a high-level administrative position at UVa AND rides the horse at UVa football games.  What an incredibly stupid school!