People are complaining about how “woke” university students are again these days, because it turns out young people can actually care about things. Go figure! It’s a stereotype that has been around probably since there have been young people going to school and old people who think they know better than those “smart” kid, though of course the term “woke” wasn’t then what it is today. And it was certainly a stereotype that existed in 2012/2013 when I went back to school as an adult. Which is why one of my classes once disappointed me pretty badly.

I had assumed I had written about this before on the site, but I can’t find it. I’ve definitely written about it somewhere on the Internet, but for completeness sake I need it here too.

I think it was one of my first-year classes, one that focused on Popular Culture in general. It seemed like it’d be up my alley. There were probably a hundred or so students in the class, so sometimes it would be broken up into groups of three with my group being taught by a TA (and, I assume the other groups also being taught by TAs, maybe one by the actual professor, who knows, doesn’t matter). So my sub-group of the class was probably thirty-something large.

At some point the TA of my group did a poll of the class asking if we thought there was still a need for Feminism. I was the only one who raised a hand to say there was. Maybe that’s my memory playing tricks on me, it’s been more than a decade now after all. Maybe there was one or two others. But you know what there wasn’t? More than that. Where were all those stereotypical “woke” students I’d want to be learning alongside?

I was disappointed, but I rationalized it. It was a first-year class, these were the youngest kids, yet to learn much of the real world outside their high schools. And I also assumed that there were probably some who thought feminism is good, but were afraid to raise their hands in a class that clearly didn’t agree with them. Maybe if more of them had, hands would have gone up in great number. I’ll never know.

I wanted my fellow students to be the kind of care about feminism and anti-racism and bringing down the man and all that. But that batch wasn’t. Because I’m not that big on the dumb systems we all live under and I would love to believe that there’s a generation out there with energy who might be able to help change things.

Shame how the kids who actually are like that get treated.