Theory & Aesthetics

And thus I found myself in the den of the dorks, otherwise known as "Theory & aesthetics of Video Games" an elective that I, unwittingly, chose to partake of this semester. In a class of around 30 persons. Of the 30 persons registered 3 are girls, myself, a girl who seems to only be in the class because her boyfriend is taking it and a 3rd girl who was not in attendance tonight.
As I walked into the room and took my customary seat near the front, so as to actually see the board somewhat, I glanced around me. Most of the boys in the class are just that, boys, little more than 18 years old, many of which still with acne, baseball caps and cartoon characters adorning their dirty T-shirts. Some of the others, who are not at first glance boys, are dressed in a fashion reminiscent of the nerd, dress pants, long sleeved dress shirts, immaculately combed hair and glasses. The remainder are obviously there on a whim in an attempt to pull up their GPA's these are the slackers, the ones who wear baggy clothes, look as though they just rolled out of bed even though the class is at 6pm, and don't take notes, participate and I'm sure are only their for the gameplay. If I were to wager a guess I'd say less than half of these guys have ever had a girlfriend, let alone kissed a girl.
I figured I'd give them the benefit of the doubt though, and as I pulled out my notebook to take lecture notes I began listening in on the conversations around me, to get a feel for what type of people these actually were. The topics of conversation included video games (understandable due to the nature of the class), D&D (again not so far off the mark, although at this point I was beginning to think my suspicions were confirmed), skateboards (slightly cooler than dorks, but still pre-pubescent), blogs (yes, yes I have one too, but mine is not on technical manuals and hacker codes!), message boards (those frequented appear to include sci-fi, RPG, video games, hacking, modding, pirating and the like), and then a lively debate regarding Mac or PC occurred followed by a discussion on Linux as an operating system and the benefits of hacking... Rudimentary hacking I might add. At which point I realized I had in fact enrolled myself in the dorkiest of all the classes at the University. I honestly believe I would be hard pressed to find a class with more nerds per capita.
I suppose I must clarify a bit though, only about half were nerds, some also fell into the category of dorks, dweebs, geeks and hackers.
On a only slightly related note my suspicions about the never been with a girl, were confirmed when we went to the gameplay portion of the class. (Yes for every 2 hour lecture we get an hour of hands-on gameplay on that which we discussed in lecture.) As I waited patiently for my turn on a console more than one of these guys gladly and willingly gave up their controllers for me to have a turn and then stood as close to me as possible as I played. One even smelled my hair and said it smelled nice, which is by no means a bad thing, but the approach was rather.... um.... creepy!
For all my griping though the class doesn't seem horrible, I'm sure I will enjoy myself and learn a lot, at least I'm going to hope so.... I guess we'll find out next week when I return to the Den of the Dorks.... LOL