[BucktheWolf]

Youch, kids! Here we go! Simmer down, now!

You're right, Debi (the male >.> Sorry!). The kids who study because of anime tend to do worse. They also tend to do worse in art, too x3 They don't want to do art, they want to draw cartoons. Should be taking cartoon classes, maybe.
But then, there are people so motivated by their interest in the culture, whether spawned from years of anime or whatever, that do extremely well in Japanese.
I'm in it for music. I want to be able to listen to Japanese music and know what it's about, then turn around and write it. I make all A's. Motivation isn't completely a matter of reason, but of will.

In our university, the people who are "ignored" in yours have social outlets. When they aren't there, they create them for people with common interests, kind of like forums, but in real life. Clubs and stuff.
It's hard to say an entire body of people is ignored on a college campus; this is the place where subcultures thrive. To generalize, you've got your anime nerds, your furries, your musicians, your socialists, your Greeks, your theatre fags, your engineers, your jocks... All colliding in one place, mingling, interacting. Their interests weave and intersect in a way that the stratification of high school does not allow. There's no way any one subculture can go completely ignored.
I'm an English major, a furry, a theater fag, and I LOVE cartoons. I was in a rock band with a math major indie kid who lived with a socialist punk-rock roommate, his best friend on campus. Our keyboardess was an anime nerd to the extreme who studied classical music, and our lead guitarist was obsessed with J-Rock and Jimi Hendrix and studied foreign languages. Our drummer listened primarily to rap music and was studying to be an electrician, and he knew the dance of his favorite fraternities. The drummer is an athlete, too.
No one is ostracized unless they do it to themselves, and even the ones who are totally anti-social, like my new bandmate Tim, end up meeting random people through the few people they know, and the weaving continues as we meet people who share our own interests and bring more to the table.
Remember, "otaku" is one aspect of a person's life. There is absolutely no one who is completely one-dimensional. I know the kids with Asperger's and autism, too. We're all quite complex creatures.

What I sense (and this is purely conjecture based on observation) is that you are offended. You find yourself stratified with people with whom you don't want to be associated, and you want to be separate. Like furries denouncing zoophiles, you've got an interest in Japan, but you don't want to be wrapped up in one ball with "otaku." Therefore, you are openly wary of anyone embracing anything purely "otaku" in an effort to distance yourself from them. Conjecture, really, but I see the signs I've seen before.
To sum up the symptoms, "This is why I'm different from these people. These people do something peculiar that is not socially acceptable, and I don't approve of what they do. Therefore, they bring any social consequences upon themselves. When I am associated with this group, I become defensive, subtly or overtly, and distance myself from them rhetorically."
This isn't inherently a bad thing. But like I said, we're all here right now talking about this, so we're all in the same boat.

I admire your dedication to your learning of kana, but when you use it in a forum with English-speaking people who don't know what the kana mean, you come across as pretentious. It doesn't read as practice, it reads as gloating. I see what you were doing now, but beforehand, it came off funny.

Woof! I turn the discussion back to you!