GuppyPal

I'm a new master's student this semester. One of our required classes involves a lot of group discussion. I've come to view about 70% of the people in that class (who are all other grad students in my program) as ignorant morons, something I did not anticipate at all going into grad school. My background is in a hard science, and my grad program is a soft science, so I think that might be part of it, but it's just really made me question my involvement in this program. I feel like only one or two other students have anything to offer me academically/intellectually, and the professors don't seem to mind the mindless discussions we have. I honestly feel like I have more stimulating conversations with my friends and former running teammates than I do in graduate school! My adviser is great though, so far anyway. Is this typical at all? What would you do in this situation?

I'm going to give you guys all the gory details on part of my grad school/work situation I struggled with this last semester. I'd like to hear input as to what you think I should have done. Here's the basis to things: I am a grad student in environmental science, and my funding was through a grant that paid graduate students to work with local high schools. This involved us organizing field trips, teaching lessons in the classroom, and working fairly closely with our teacher-partner. I worked with two different teachers. One was great and easy to work with and loved me. The other hated my guts for reasons I'm not 100% certain of. She was abused as a child and was recently divorced by her husband (who she said she hated), and everyone involved in the situation agreed part of her hatred for me was simply because I was male. The other reason I think is because I was naturally good with the students in her class and am very knowledgeable on the subjects I was teaching, and since she's very insecure, she would get angry any time I had a success with the students as she saw it as me "outdoing" her or something. Anyway, her hatred for me expressed itself in her being blatantly disrespectful to me every time I worked with her, sometimes even in front of the students, and she even went so far as to tell lies about me to my boss to try and get me fired. When my boss and I talked about it, my boss acted like I was equally at fault and that it was just a personality difference and nothing more. Keep in mind I have worked with several other teachers and grad students, and NONE of them had any problem with me whatsoever. When I told my boss these things and even showed written proof the other teachers liked me and couldn't believe I was having problems elsewhere, my boss just kind of dismissed it. My boss instructed me to just agree with bitch teacher no matter what she said so that I wouldn't anger her more. This lead to the teacher doubling down and treating me even worse. I then decided to go above my boss's head and complain to her boss. He stepped in and verbally supported me, but then in a joint meeting he really didn't do anything and took my boss's side. I later found out that my boss has a personal friendship with the bitch teacher I worked with AND a personal friendship with her boss and that she was hired based on this friendship and not her credentials (I found all this out by talking to others who know them all well and have been around longer than I have). This teaching situation was the source of my funding, so by quitting it I had to quit grad school. I was unhappy with the program I was in anyway, but I definitely would have stuck around at least another semester to see how things went had I not had to deal with the aforementioned bullshit. I feel almost like I was set up, like I was verbally abused and harassed simply for doing my job well, and I was not given support just because my superiors cared more about protecting friends than what is right and wrong. Makes me want to puke just thinking about it. I'm wondering what I could have done differently or what you would recommend. Keep in mind that my boss's boss is the director of this particular graduate program and has been at the University for 20 years. What are your thoughts?