so i made weigh-ins pretty damn spectacularly. weighed in at 130.
unfortunately, i didn't cut my hair.
my rubber band broke and my ponytail came out about 20 seconds into the fight. i fought the rest of the fight almost literally blinded by my own hair. needless to say, i lost pretty badly. during much of the fight visibility was so poor that i had to figure out where he was by feeling the vibrations of the mat. f*'n ey...
so anyway, i'm just a student now. i'm trying to finish strong. here i've been in school for 20 years and never really put much effort into it. part of it was laziness, part of it was fear that i wouldn't be able to reach my high standards. i mean, a guy who doesn't ever study or go to class but crams and pulls out a B, that's kind of impressive. i guess i always had a fear that if i did study and attend class and work hard that i wouldn't be able to get an A. so i underacheived and tried to make my underachievment seem like something bigger and better than what it really was - a cop out.
that said, another large part of my underperformance at school has to do with my personality. i've always been a person who's interested in a variety of things and i seek out experiences. so when i skipped class, i didn't just skip class to watch a dvd, i skipped to go to a protest, or to an art museum, or to practise piano...and maybe sometimes to watch a dvd :-p same thing with not doing homework. i remember when i first got to college i was very dilligent in sitting myself down and doing my homework. but i became so quickly distracted by the offerings of DC...and the partying. i never thought of myself as a party animal, but that's exactly what i became in college. and not for any great reason. i suppose just out of loneliness.
it probably takes not great stretch of your imagination to believe that a law student might be the nerdish sort that doesn't have the best social resume. and that's true of me. i moved around incessantly growing up (13 schools before i reached high school!). i was always the new kid at school, PLUS i was usually one of the smartest kids in school. combine that with being shitty at sports, awesome at music, having an ethnic name, and a strict mum, and you have the perfect recipe for being picked on and teased, by EVERYONE, even the other nerds. so i guess when i got to college i really just wanted to find a niche, a group of friends. people told me that i'd finally fit in when i got to college, because i'd be surrounded by other smart and interesting people like me. that was a load of horseshit.
the thing about colleges these days is that pretty much anyone can go, even the brutes who made my youth miserable. and the girls in college are no more interested in the smart kids in college than they were in high school. so college was simply a continuation of everything that came before it - shy around girls, awkward around acquaintances, and eventually i'd find a way to make people dislike me.
the later years in college weren't like that. in retrospect, my first college was a bad choice. almost everyone at AU was a drugged up rich kid (drugged up as in cocaine, not prescriptions, although those abounded too). eventually i found some normal kids but that took a while. and Illinois was a real blast. people were NORMAL. it was weird. all my life i had pretty much just hung out with nerds, thinking that they would be more accepting of me. and even at Illinois i guess i hung out with an atypical crowd. but there i was at a "common" state school and fitting in. looking back, i wish i'd started out at Illinois and maybe gone to DC for grad school. DC has some awesome opportunities that i was too young and naive to take advantage of when i was a student there.
and now law school...funny thing about law school is that it's like middle school with less action. all the drama that comes with a small insular community resurfaces and in fact is probably even more intense. lucky for me, i'm still somewhat on the outer social ring. a "floater" i suppose you might call me. i have a group of guys that i hang out with more often than any other people, but i still float from social group to social group. i don't really find myself on the "in" with anyone though, meaning that i'm most likely to be the person that people forget to call or invite unless they need a ride. notwithstanding, i feel i have found a pretty meaningful level of social acceptance here.
i don't want you to get the wrong impression of me. i'm not weird or antisocial or hard to be around. i'm a pretty well-adjusted person. i just come from a different background that sometimes puts a void between me and other people. most guys can talk about sports - my expertise would lie in music or art. and being a naturally shy person who attended an all boys high school, i never really did learn how to flirt with girls, which means i'm more often single than taken. i guess that's the biggest thing i would change about myself, if i knew how. i think it affects my overall confidence, not to be particularly secure in my "girl skills". people say that girls are attracted to confidence. i think it's kinduva circular thing. i think guys are confident because they get girls, which makes them perform better and be more confident elsewhere in life, which makes girls attracted to them, and so on. but being smart, artistic, and shy doesn't really get too many girls.
so why am i pouring all of this out for people to read? who knows. i guess it might eventually cause some embarassment to me. but maybe it's like writing a diary that you know people are going to read. maybe i'm writing memoirs here. anyone who keeps an online blog has a certain desire to publish his/her life. i guess maybe this is a good way for me to share myself without the inconveniences of time or shyness. i love to spend time with people, but i just don't have enough time to spend with everyone, especially you who are, in most instances, hundreds of miles away
isn't that an ironic bitch? i love to spend social time with people, but i'm shy around girls...heh.
ah well...i need to sleep. i'm going to leave in a few hours for a weekend trip. not sure yet where. but i'm going. thanks for reading, good night.
unfortunately, i didn't cut my hair.
my rubber band broke and my ponytail came out about 20 seconds into the fight. i fought the rest of the fight almost literally blinded by my own hair. needless to say, i lost pretty badly. during much of the fight visibility was so poor that i had to figure out where he was by feeling the vibrations of the mat. f*'n ey...
so anyway, i'm just a student now. i'm trying to finish strong. here i've been in school for 20 years and never really put much effort into it. part of it was laziness, part of it was fear that i wouldn't be able to reach my high standards. i mean, a guy who doesn't ever study or go to class but crams and pulls out a B, that's kind of impressive. i guess i always had a fear that if i did study and attend class and work hard that i wouldn't be able to get an A. so i underacheived and tried to make my underachievment seem like something bigger and better than what it really was - a cop out.
that said, another large part of my underperformance at school has to do with my personality. i've always been a person who's interested in a variety of things and i seek out experiences. so when i skipped class, i didn't just skip class to watch a dvd, i skipped to go to a protest, or to an art museum, or to practise piano...and maybe sometimes to watch a dvd :-p same thing with not doing homework. i remember when i first got to college i was very dilligent in sitting myself down and doing my homework. but i became so quickly distracted by the offerings of DC...and the partying. i never thought of myself as a party animal, but that's exactly what i became in college. and not for any great reason. i suppose just out of loneliness.
it probably takes not great stretch of your imagination to believe that a law student might be the nerdish sort that doesn't have the best social resume. and that's true of me. i moved around incessantly growing up (13 schools before i reached high school!). i was always the new kid at school, PLUS i was usually one of the smartest kids in school. combine that with being shitty at sports, awesome at music, having an ethnic name, and a strict mum, and you have the perfect recipe for being picked on and teased, by EVERYONE, even the other nerds. so i guess when i got to college i really just wanted to find a niche, a group of friends. people told me that i'd finally fit in when i got to college, because i'd be surrounded by other smart and interesting people like me. that was a load of horseshit.
the thing about colleges these days is that pretty much anyone can go, even the brutes who made my youth miserable. and the girls in college are no more interested in the smart kids in college than they were in high school. so college was simply a continuation of everything that came before it - shy around girls, awkward around acquaintances, and eventually i'd find a way to make people dislike me.
the later years in college weren't like that. in retrospect, my first college was a bad choice. almost everyone at AU was a drugged up rich kid (drugged up as in cocaine, not prescriptions, although those abounded too). eventually i found some normal kids but that took a while. and Illinois was a real blast. people were NORMAL. it was weird. all my life i had pretty much just hung out with nerds, thinking that they would be more accepting of me. and even at Illinois i guess i hung out with an atypical crowd. but there i was at a "common" state school and fitting in. looking back, i wish i'd started out at Illinois and maybe gone to DC for grad school. DC has some awesome opportunities that i was too young and naive to take advantage of when i was a student there.
and now law school...funny thing about law school is that it's like middle school with less action. all the drama that comes with a small insular community resurfaces and in fact is probably even more intense. lucky for me, i'm still somewhat on the outer social ring. a "floater" i suppose you might call me. i have a group of guys that i hang out with more often than any other people, but i still float from social group to social group. i don't really find myself on the "in" with anyone though, meaning that i'm most likely to be the person that people forget to call or invite unless they need a ride. notwithstanding, i feel i have found a pretty meaningful level of social acceptance here.
i don't want you to get the wrong impression of me. i'm not weird or antisocial or hard to be around. i'm a pretty well-adjusted person. i just come from a different background that sometimes puts a void between me and other people. most guys can talk about sports - my expertise would lie in music or art. and being a naturally shy person who attended an all boys high school, i never really did learn how to flirt with girls, which means i'm more often single than taken. i guess that's the biggest thing i would change about myself, if i knew how. i think it affects my overall confidence, not to be particularly secure in my "girl skills". people say that girls are attracted to confidence. i think it's kinduva circular thing. i think guys are confident because they get girls, which makes them perform better and be more confident elsewhere in life, which makes girls attracted to them, and so on. but being smart, artistic, and shy doesn't really get too many girls.
so why am i pouring all of this out for people to read? who knows. i guess it might eventually cause some embarassment to me. but maybe it's like writing a diary that you know people are going to read. maybe i'm writing memoirs here. anyone who keeps an online blog has a certain desire to publish his/her life. i guess maybe this is a good way for me to share myself without the inconveniences of time or shyness. i love to spend time with people, but i just don't have enough time to spend with everyone, especially you who are, in most instances, hundreds of miles away
isn't that an ironic bitch? i love to spend social time with people, but i'm shy around girls...heh.
ah well...i need to sleep. i'm going to leave in a few hours for a weekend trip. not sure yet where. but i'm going. thanks for reading, good night.
another thing: i am really looking forward to going to d.c.! the husband-bot has told me that it's really great, lots of fantastic museums. his parents live near there and we're going to visit them later this year and i am really pumped for the museumage.
third: i like the long entry.
For background: I've always been the (relatively) successful member of a crew of big shy dorks. I'm a big dork. So I've often been in the postion of cajoling my friends into chasing girls. So this is unsolicited, but maybe not completlely useless... ignore me.