Reality
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Live Strong
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with some friends from High School at my neighbor’s house. Good times all around. I really miss the dynamic, how ever weird at times we had. I miss so many things about being home.
I feel torn between two places. My friends here are hopefully going to always remain. My friends at college are just forming and I am mentally confused as to where I lay my loyalty down and where I am going to establish myself. In college I am all alone, no connections or friends from home. At home I have my old connections, people I have known for years.
College has been a true test of stigmas. At home many or rather some people continue to keep a certain mindset of others, where at college everyone is forming there thoughts of others still, allowing for people to be whom they want and do what they want. I can honestly say I have made friends with people at college I can see staying in touch with for ever, specifically some would be girlfriend material.
There is no real way to describe the feeling of being at this party tonight. Sure it was great fun and nice to see people, but I realize that with in 15 hours I will be on a train back to Boston. I will once again be far from everything I know, everything that is "safe". In time how ever I hope that feeling dwindles and that both places can be "safe" and my "home". Perhaps these two very different worlds can co exist easier in time.
Down the road ... I will feel more comfortable and more established at college. As easy a transition it’s been, tonight only reminds me of what I am leaving behind.
To the crew at home ... hopefully years down the road we remain as solid as we are now. To the crew at Ida ... hopefully our bonds grow stronger and create memories that will echo in years to come.
My Heritage :
1 Comments:
Interesting Insights. The transition to college living is one most certantly fraught with difficulties, and I know a number of people in your situations.
For better for for worse, I've had a relatively seemless transition because I've just adopted the view that social relations are the absolute lowest priority in my life and are disregarded if they at all interfere with anything else. Put simply: I choose not to care.
Which is not entirely true, because at times I venture out with an individually directed strategy to win over some girl I find attractive, much in the way I operated in high school. But I, for the most part, have learned to live without it, occuping and defining myself but what I accomplish and what I do, rather than who I hang out with: the relationships I forge have been almost entirely professional rather than personal.
I've also experienced some difficulty in the sense that I've come from an environment where to do something was considered a "big deal" - it involved a lot of planing, various stresses (if I were not around the house enough my dad would become irate), and ultimately, the extent to which I hung out with people outside of school was very limited (you had much less of this, living on a more normal street where others were physically accessible - given my location, I had to go driving if I wanted to go anywhere or see anyone). So its difficult for me to comfortably adjust to an area where everything is so close that most errands are casual social outings. (In Easton, a trip to Staples would be a solitary activity. Here, given its close proximity, people will take along friends and such to provide entertainment, or just as something to do. I, of course, have been making my numerous trips all alone.)
The other difficulty is that given my high school experiences, there is a great degree of social interaction that I'm not fully comfortable with, simply because I have had zero experience in the area.
That being said, I have had an absolutely fabulous experience, because I love the location and the general attitude of the place (where else could I stop and help raise a wind turbine on the way back from an EMS shift?) But all of my interactions and activities have been solitary, with the exception of meals with those who live around me and when I hang out with Barlow people. But I can live with that and enjoy it. Generalized social activity had traditionally to me meant little, whereas objective social activity (when I'm trying to get something or go somewhere) has always meant a great deal but has been substantially out of reach.
Granted, I've gotten far farther here than I have at Barlow - the idea of just casually going to on campus activities with a highly attractive girl was something that was so remote it was absurd to worry about it at Barlow. But, that ended up being a small blip on the radar of an otherwise unremarkable social experience. Everyone who had told me that college would be different failed to mention that while I definately could get somewhere in college, it wouldn't be without the same unrelenting effort, nor did they take into account the effect that my complete lack of experiences would have on my chances.
But I don't worry about those things - I spend my time doing what I want, when I want, unhindered by thoughts of who I could be doing it with. I'm productive, I'm effective, I've accomplished a lot an my grades have been far beyond and above what I ever experienced in high school. However I think without my inclination for a more solitary existiance and my single room, I'd be experincing much of what you and everyone else has been.
While others talk of going home, or transfers, or visiting significant others, I have already begun to firm plans for staying the length of the summer in Burlington for next four years and minimizing my time at home, save the occasional vacation.
However I wish you and everyone else I know who's been having such difficulties luck, and encourage you to stick with it, after some time, you'll see the light at the end of the tunnel.
(Have I succeeded in creating a comment longer than your original post?)
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