For the past year I have been a student at UNCC, and I have been away from my high school friends for nearly 18 months. During high school towards the middle of my senior year various teachers were telling the seniors as a whole “enjoy the time you have together, for after you graduate, you will likely never see anyone from high school again”. I originally doubted this and I guess went into a self-generated dilousion that through some miracle all of the Highland people would remain in constant contact, but unfortunately that hasnt been the case. I guess I should have realized when Mr. Hudson said it that it wasn’t bullshit. At the current time the only person from high school I really interact with is Guy Broome. Guy wasn’t really around me much in high school, but now he is, its kind of strange. I haven’t seen Matt Lamb in like forever, same with Jeff, although ive talked to him some and he still takes an interest in my life on occasion. Other than these few people, I don’t really have the opportunity to talk to any of my class anymore. Looking back on my senior year, I spent more time hiding from the fact that things were ending than I did on anything else. During senior year I spent a lot of spare time at Highland working with the network and various other things that didn’t really matter all that much, but I wasn’t with people. I spent more time saying goodbye to the building and the technology than I did to the people. In addition to spending time away from people, I also spent time in class at Gaston College, getting a jumpstart on my education, or perhaps just a jumpstart on being alone. Funny thing is, I think I spent more time getting to know the people at Gaston College more than I have tried getting to know people at UNCC. Towards the end of the last semester at Highland I decided to write lettrers to everyone I cared about, but I didn’t make it very far on my list. I only manged to get the letters to Jeff and Matt Lamb written, no one else got one, except Mr. Frost, who got one because I went back during the summer.
Now that I have been at UNCC for a year, I excepted that I would have developed some sort of social network, but I somehow managed to not do that. For the first time since I graduated from high school I have actually started making friends again, very slowly, but still, its progress. I have met one person who is extreamly interesting, but he is a lot more socially active than I am, and I feel really weird when I tell him that I don’t want to do stuff. I really wish I could be a lot more like him, but its not in my personality to be that outgoing. Hes the type of person who goes clubbing, dancing and goes to parties. I wouldn’t mind going to clubs or dancing, but I think I draw the line at going to college parties. That is just absolutely not me. I want to be more socially open, but going from anti-social to party-animal could be too much of a shock to myself, my existing friends and the fabric of space-time in general. Lewis has noted that I am a “nerd”. ok, where is the news flash item here? of course I am, I would prefer to index my book collection than go out and interact with living, breathing fleshy humans any day. For my life to be stable and happy I do need to seek the occasional additional person to add to my social network, but I need people more like me. People I frequently interact with sometimes worry that I wont have time for when when I interact with others, but the situation is really the opposite, I presently do very little with my time and am availible a lot, I just always seem busy. Adding people to my life is likely to make me more human-focused instead of being project-focused. My social network isn’t what it was in high school, and I consider this a good thing. I need people in my life who are able to accept me for who I am and not judge me based upon some sort of predisposed opinion that they conjured up through a confusing set of adolescent influences.