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Aug. 17, 2017
When first year Abby Kincaid first stepped foot on campus, she knew it was home. “It was like, my whole life I had been too smart for everyone around me, and now all of a sudden, there were people close to my level.” Kincaid was quick to add that she totally wasn’t a That Kid, because what she said in class actually helped everyone else understand the reading.
However, like so many other precociously gifted students, she was soon to find that she was wrong. “You can only go so many classes in a row where literally no one but you has done the reading, before you want to just die. And even if they have done the reading, most of the time they just don’t know what they’re talking about the way I do.”
Kincaid is not alone. Second year Bobby Philips had a similar experience his first year when, halfway through Winter Quarter, he wrote and posted a detailed explanation about his growing disillusionment with the University. Notable excerpts include “I knew UChicago was the place where fun went to die, but never did I expect that the plebeian Nietzsche haters around me would make me want to kill myself” and “I haven’t left the Reg in three days. This is the price I pay to hone my intellect, and people unwilling to pay that toll are beneath me.”
When reached for comment about his post, Philips replied, “I was thinking about making it a UChicago Secret – on the good secret page, of course – but then I thought, You know what Bobby? You deserve credit for this. If people in SOSC can’t appreciate your brilliant observations, then maybe the wider world will be able to feed the ego machine you’ve lodged at the core of your personality.”
University officials have responded to complaints about the lack of truly academic academia by students like Kincaid and Philips. In an official statement on Monday, Dean Ellison announced that intellectual safe spaces were in the process of being reintroduced on campus “for the sake of truly gifted individuals.”
The reasoning behind it, the Dean wrote, was to protect the precious, precious brain cells of the lucky few endowed with the capacity for greater reason from death by atrophy in Core classes. “This will allow students to thrive in environments created especially for them, letting them become the master race of circle jerkers they were always destined to be. We bow down to you, O Wise Ones, and hope that one day you might impart some of your vast knowledge unto us.” Dean Ellison did not respond to the Dealer’s request for further comments.
