Different Since High School

I’ve been hanging out just a tad more with some high school friends recently and it’s been kind of interesting to me. It’s weird because I had lost touch with them for a long while. My family moved to TX right before my senior year of high school, so during college on vacations, when all my HS friends came back to the Bay Area, I’d be away at TX. So we just lost touch.

Anyway, I’m not sure why, but when we get together I spend a long time thinking about how I’m acting. I dunno, I just think I’m different from how I was in high school. The main thing I think is that I’m more socially competent. And I’ve been wondering how that happened.

I think I developed socially a lot in college and I think the primary reason why is because there were a lot of people like me. I dunno if that makes sense. But like, high school was tough in certain ways, just, not very many people like me. It was primarily white, rich, and Catholic. I was none of those things. So I had my friends, but whatever, I only connected with a small subset.

In college, I was still awkward with most people, but numbers wise, there were tons more people I connected with. Biggest thing is that there were more Asians, and more Christians, er, evangelical Protestants around. I think that’s what it was. More people I could connect with meant more social development. It grew from there I think.

The other thing I think I learned in college was how to play this game. I’ve mentioned this before. But it’s something I’m conscious of and I picked it up from KCPC. What it is is basically you act like you’re friends or close to people when you really aren’t. It’s just kind of a social lubricant. Coming into college I wasn’t like this at all. Like there’s this semi-famous story, I had met Eddie early on in my frosh dorm, and like, maybe the end of the first day of orientation we ran into each other walking to a dorm meeting and he was all “What’s up dude!” and buddy buddy like he was my friend and I remember thinking, who is this guy? He’s not my friend. Ouch, huh? He was just being friendly. But I dunno, that’s how I was.

But now, yeah, I think I know how to play that game. I dunno if game is even the right word. It might just be friendliness. But yeah, I’m better at it.

Geesh, another boring entry. They just keep on coming.