I've started to realize I live in a bubble.  I have terrible interactions with the people who work at the rec center and lately, some of my public health classmates.  I forget that this is reality, that these other segments of people exist because I've created a lifestyle structure that excludes them: the douchebags. 

My classes are mostly with other development people, who tend to be intelligent, conscientious, and well exposed to other cultures.  My good friends are peace corps volunteers who spent years living and working abroad.  My minneapolis friends are artsy and open.  I'm surrounded by such wonderful, kind people.  The midwest in general is nice.  So it's always such a shock to be slapped with people who basically fit the "american stereotype" as I see it.  I thought I left high school 8 years ago, but here I'm running into all these twenty somethings with serious attitude problems.  They're overtan, entitled, dismissive, elitist, and other more strongly worded words.  The worst thing?  That they're not going to be your neighborhood Burger King associate managers.  They're going to be working in the Public Health sectors, they're going to be professionals shaping our American future.  I think I want to crawl back into my bubble, reality is so underwhelming.  Either that or take a USAID job in Afghanistan.  I can handle the possibility of death... I'm less certain about asshole middle class americans.