This is the kind of navel-gazing blog post that I normally hate to read, so, if you're like me, take that as a warning and skip the first bit.
I've just been moping around since I got back from Portland. I met a 21-year-old girl in the student village laundry room the other day. I told her that I feel like I'm a freshman again living with all the first-years here. "I know, isn't it great?" she replied.
No, girl, it's not. I've already done freshman year (and sophomore and junior) and the bloom has well worn off the rose. I'm really itching for companionship from people for whom college isn't still a novelty.
This is part of the whole "plunging into a strange environment" thing. As I bitched in my earlier post about music, I naively assumed that I would be around people who might not like the same things that I liked, but would introduce me to new and better things that I would also like.
Obviously, it's not that simple. I guess it would be like coming from here to Duke University or something and being disappointed with the fact that everyone really liked watching "Step Up: To The Streets" and listening to Low by Flo-Rida and T-Pain (which, incidentally is still really big here).
I didn't even think about the fact that, if the things I am passionate about are enjoyed by a small niche at Bennington, then of course the niche would be much smaller at a big, foreign school. I'm just so used to being around like-minded people!
In one of the many handouts they gave exchange students here was a graph of the normal exchange student's happiness level as the term progressed. It started at the ecstatic "honeymoon period" where everything is new and exciting then dipped into a long slump where the exchange student "hates everything Irish" before finally coming to the "acceptance stage" somewhere around December. While I don't hate everything Irish, I have come to realize how much I like certain things in America - or, at least, in the niche I've found in America - and I hope it doesn't take until December for me to be totally comfortable here.
If nothing else I'm being forced to find a new comfort zone. I guess it can be hard in a big university to find like-minded people - a social lesson I feel like I'm learning kind of late.
But, tomorrow I have plans to go into the city with a friend and try and find things for a Halloween costume, then to break away by myself and do some sightseeing, if it's not too cold. Nobody's here on the weekend, so it's the perfect time.
I don't know what I'm going to be for Halloween. I keep coming back to the low-budget idea of getting some clothes, ripping them up and putting fake blood on myself and coming up with some clever reason why I'm dead. Or maybe I'll be evil St. Patrick - bringing snakes back to Ireland. Or a Protestant/Catholic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that beats himself up.
In my moping I've been listening to this great little tune from the Eels' first album, Beautiful Freak. It's really wonderful. Presented here by World of Warcraft gnomes, for extra pathos:
And in cheering myself up I've been listening to the greatest James Bond theme of all time, courtesy of Duran Duran. Top this, Jack White:
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2 comments:
They gave us that same handout in Paris. Luckily for me, and I hope for you too, it wasn't as extreme as hating absolutely everything for 3 months. It was more like a vascillation between hating and loving that lasted until May, which sounds awful, but it really wasn't so bad. After a while the hate periods became much, much shorter compared to the lovely ones. High peaks and and only kinda low valleys, yaknowhaimean?
Yeah, I'm not too worried. That's good to hear, though.
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