Meet a J-School J-Bag

Anyone can stand out as an asshole. In work, in classes, in daily interactions. It's not that hard unless you're in journalism school. Then you're surrounded by supreme dicks of the highest order. It takes something special to stand out, something extra - incessant ingratiation to authority figures usually works, and so does general creepiness. This case study possesses both of these traits in addition to a hobby too bizarre to be believed.

I've never talked to this particular J-bag; he's been in two of the three massive journalism lecture classes in my freshman year. I don't know if he means to be a dick - in fact, I think he has good intentions - but shit, does it ever come off bad.

You'll seem weird when you're the only kid talking in big lecture classes - in blatant but successful attempts to win favor with professors. But that's standard stuff that goes on in any class or major. This kid clings onto everything journalism. He hangs around at office hours. He tags along to professional conferences and takes awkward pictures of himself standing in front of unimportant things or with fairly unimportant people. The professors at our amazing School of Journalism have to get tired of giving each other handjobs every day. This kid helps with that by basically blowing the ego of anyone that can edit a grade on Blackboard - provided they'll put in a few points extra on that test. (Which they will.)

That stops with fellow students, of course, who fall short of the level of importance necessary to interact with the J-bag. He'll condescend the fuck out of you. He'll reprimand you for the stupid question you asked during the review session, or sigh when someone gets up the nerve to speak and contradicts a professor's point. And then he'll go home and friend you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter, as he's done with seemingly every freshman majoring in journalism at this fine university. How does he figure out who all these people are? Does he think this will help in networking later in life? Can he not understand we laugh and mumble during his rambling speeches not because they're brilliant, but because they're bullshit? This I do not know - but as a fan of train wrecks, I sure as fuck pressed the "accept" button on that friend request and kept my eyes peeled.

It turns out the J-bag's major hobby, his purpose in life even, is "ballhawking," or going to random baseball games, mostly at high schools and now at Mizzou, and trying to collect as many foul balls as possible. Why you would want to collect OVER A THOUSAND BASEBALLS OF LITTLE TO NO IMPORTANCE, just to store them in your basement, never to touch them again? I do not know. Regardless, the newspaper, with all its students desperate to produce content, did a story on him and dat bizarre hobby. It includes him quoted: "Don't get me wrong, I love giving balls to kids..." You can read the rest yourself.

Now the J-bag is pimping out his blog, with thousands-of-words-long posts (complete with pictures!) about how he got seven foul balls at the Mizzou game yesterday, which is bad enough. But THIS. POETRY. HE WROTE A POEM. ABOUT A BASEBALL. The best (worst?) part? It's tagged as "postmodernism." I ask, when you click on this link, to ponder: is there any fragmentation present in this narrative text? Maybe some paradoxes? Unreliable narration? Any metafiction perhaps? Does it read like David Foster Wallace? (Answer: more like Ian Fleming. So, spy fiction! James Bond wasn't so postmodern...but not that there's anything wrong with that.)

TL;DR: annoying kid in my journalism classes creepily friends me, I creepily find his blog and mock his hobby and admirable attempt at writing. 

Yes, I'm a terrible person. No, I don't give a fuck.