Bloody American desks and enforced immaturity

I know this is a very strange subject to write a blog on but the bloody American desks are really beginning to annoy me. They use those silly desk-chair combination things that you see on American TV shows that feature schools. The desk is more like a square tray that isn't quite as big as an A3 bit of paper and it is impossible to fit everything on the damn thing. I admit that I can be fairly clumsy and yesterday I most certainly was, in a single class I dropped about things about 5 times, pens, lids, screw top caps from water bottles, you name it and it tried to escape from my desk. They are slightly at an angle so things can easily roll off too. It restricts your movement so much that you have to ask your neighbours to pick things up for you.

They also jam as many desks in as possible, my Arabic teacher finds it difficult to walk between the rows because her bottom is too big, and shes not even fat. They also have them rammed up against each other to such a degree that the person sitting in front of me yesterday managed to knock my water bottle off my desk (thank God I'd put the lid on - I almost hadn't) by pushing her elbow back an inch. This also means that leg room is a a minimum and my legs frequently begin to cramp, I end up feeling like a squirming child.

I think that it may all be a government conspiracy to keep people slim, because you can't get that fat and still be able to sit in them, one (particularly obese) older woman has to sit on the floor in one of my classes. Seriously, she had to pay ridiculous tuition but has to sit on the floor.

At my home university they rent all the seminar rooms out as conference facilities, so it is all very posh and spacious, you get a proper, normal desk and a comfy chair, you can decide how close to the desk you sit and most importantly you get about 4 times the amount of space you do here. Heaven. Although I still do drop things, just not as frequently.

It makes me feel like a child sitting in those chairs/desk things, but its a feeling that I'm fast growing accustomed to. If you're under 21 you're treated like a second class citizen, and even Oz, who is 24, says he feels a lot younger here than in Australia. When people ask how old you are you get a look of pity when you admit "19" and I'm generally treated as though I'm less responsible. I don't quite know how to describe it, but there is just a general attitude that if you're under about 25/30 your still a child. I'm used to being treated like an adult in England, and it is a big annoyance to be treated as a child. Next month is my 20th birthday and instead of having a minor breakdown and suddenly feeling really old as one of my friends did ("My teenage years have passed me by and I never got to enjoy them - its only responsibility from here on in!") I find myself longing to be 20, being 20 is not nearly so bad as being 19, I will be closer to being 21 and people will respect me more for that, they'll probably still look down on me, but hopefully not as much.

If they continue to treat me like a child I may begin acting like one, which I'd really hate to do and hopefully will not happen. However, I have noticed that young Americans, particularly men, are a lot more immature than their European counterparts, but then if they are used to being treated like children what else is going to happen?