i actually remember the first day i walked into classes pretty well. my first class was calculus 102, which was a full year credit long course for honours math students. i was walking into a math/physics double major. there were a couple of pure math students, but it was just the general elite math course, meaning there were other double majors: math/economics, math/chemistry, math/comp. sci. i think there was even a math/psych student. there were no engineers, except the ones at the butt of the jokes.

it was a small first year class by university standards - maybe 40 students. the small class size was a consequence of the course being set aside specifically for honours math students, that is students that were expected to carry forward in honours math courses. i ended up switching, but a lot of these students had obscure degree requirements and would have ended up graduating alone in their classes.

it was in a room that wasn't any larger than a high school classroom.

i was expecting a room full of absolute nerds. what that meant, to me, was an abstraction of the berkeley stereotype; not pocket protectors, but pink floyd shirts. more broadly, i was expecting to meet a bunch of kids that didn't care about social expectations and didn't adhere to norms and had spent most of their lives as outcasts as a consequence of it.

i wore a pair of disshelved jeans and a loose-fitting plain white t-shirt with a faint mustard stain on it. i didn't bother showering or shaving.

i was kind of mortified when i walked in and instead found a bunch of extremely rich kids wearing exceedingly expensive clothes and talking about network television.

if that day had turned out differently, if i had met the nerds i was hoping for, i might have engaged. but, the fact is that i should have turned around right then and there - because i knew it, in my gut.