So Ocean City is almost real. It's been something potential hanging overhead for this whole year, but in four days we're going to be on the road. What the heck? Four days!
Which means I have three days to pack my life up, in the midst of working, trying to squeeze in everything left to do this year, teaching Danny and Jeff (fellow road-trippers) to drive stick, and studying for two finals on Monday. If this is possible, which is sort of unsure right now, we're going to hit the road in the wee hours on Tuesday morning and drive through all day Tuesday. What will happen after that is a little up in the air. We might stay at Jeff's house in Philadelphia Tuesday night or we might drive on into Ocean City. It'll be a road decision, as they say.
When I say the possibility of finishing packing is a little unsure, I sort of mean it. When I look around at this room, packed to the corners, I can't even imagine shuffling necessary things into the right boxes and other stuff into other boxes and making the right calls and condensing it down and not forgetting 200 things.
Packing is one of those things that drives me up the wall.
Here's another good source of stress: Change. And more specifically, change into a less comfortable environment.
We quarter students are all part of the Ocean City 2012 Facebook page and so we can go on and look at the stuff the semester students are up to and wish we didn't have finals. Some things seem kind of neat -- living space rivalries (the mannex or the womINN) or stories about people raising support in unexpected ways.
But some things are decidedly not neat. Having an outreach just a few days after arriving, scrambling around trying to find jobs, and the biggest thing: making new friends.
Don't misread that! Friends aren't the problem. Friends are nice. Sometimes I enjoy the ones I have.
But what sucks, and what makes me feel as nauseous and inadequate as when I was preparing to come to college, is making this whole new set of friends.
Getting to know people is a huge amount of time and effort. My current friends-- we've hung out. We've played games together and learned that we're competitive, and they've seen that I enjoy basketball, and I've seen that they enjoy singing, and they've seen that I'm stubborn and hurtful, and I've seen that they love God a lot even when they don't act like it.
But no one in Ocean City has seen that I like to shut the door to my room and play guitar for a few hours when I'm stressed. And I haven't seen that when they sigh and fidget with their shoes it means they have something to talk about. So we're going to have to learn all this about each other.
But learning takes time and effort and energy and right now I don't care that their favorite color is brown because it reminds them of home, and I don't want to learn why they like Carrie Underwood more than Taylor Swift.
I already have friends!
I don't want to put in this time and energy and cheery smiling and acting like I'm interested in getting to know someone who I could care less about -- and then after we've pushed through the unpleasant fake phase, to let it all just drop because they go to UCLA and I go to Northwestern and let's be real we'll probably never see each other again. It's an abuse of relational energy.
And what it makes it worse is when I look around and see everyone else being super friendly and digging into this trove of new friends. And part of me wants to start friending people on Facebook and part of me wants to suck it up and be fake for a little while until I can get to know people and actually be interested in their lives and part of me wants to say "Who cares if it's just for a summer?"
But then part of me is like, "Don't be ridiculous."
And that part of me is ridiculous. But sometimes it's hard to argue with yourself.
Which means I have three days to pack my life up, in the midst of working, trying to squeeze in everything left to do this year, teaching Danny and Jeff (fellow road-trippers) to drive stick, and studying for two finals on Monday. If this is possible, which is sort of unsure right now, we're going to hit the road in the wee hours on Tuesday morning and drive through all day Tuesday. What will happen after that is a little up in the air. We might stay at Jeff's house in Philadelphia Tuesday night or we might drive on into Ocean City. It'll be a road decision, as they say.
When I say the possibility of finishing packing is a little unsure, I sort of mean it. When I look around at this room, packed to the corners, I can't even imagine shuffling necessary things into the right boxes and other stuff into other boxes and making the right calls and condensing it down and not forgetting 200 things.
Packing is one of those things that drives me up the wall.
Here's another good source of stress: Change. And more specifically, change into a less comfortable environment.
We quarter students are all part of the Ocean City 2012 Facebook page and so we can go on and look at the stuff the semester students are up to and wish we didn't have finals. Some things seem kind of neat -- living space rivalries (the mannex or the womINN) or stories about people raising support in unexpected ways.
But some things are decidedly not neat. Having an outreach just a few days after arriving, scrambling around trying to find jobs, and the biggest thing: making new friends.
Don't misread that! Friends aren't the problem. Friends are nice. Sometimes I enjoy the ones I have.
But what sucks, and what makes me feel as nauseous and inadequate as when I was preparing to come to college, is making this whole new set of friends.
Getting to know people is a huge amount of time and effort. My current friends-- we've hung out. We've played games together and learned that we're competitive, and they've seen that I enjoy basketball, and I've seen that they enjoy singing, and they've seen that I'm stubborn and hurtful, and I've seen that they love God a lot even when they don't act like it.
But no one in Ocean City has seen that I like to shut the door to my room and play guitar for a few hours when I'm stressed. And I haven't seen that when they sigh and fidget with their shoes it means they have something to talk about. So we're going to have to learn all this about each other.
But learning takes time and effort and energy and right now I don't care that their favorite color is brown because it reminds them of home, and I don't want to learn why they like Carrie Underwood more than Taylor Swift.
I already have friends!
I don't want to put in this time and energy and cheery smiling and acting like I'm interested in getting to know someone who I could care less about -- and then after we've pushed through the unpleasant fake phase, to let it all just drop because they go to UCLA and I go to Northwestern and let's be real we'll probably never see each other again. It's an abuse of relational energy.
And what it makes it worse is when I look around and see everyone else being super friendly and digging into this trove of new friends. And part of me wants to start friending people on Facebook and part of me wants to suck it up and be fake for a little while until I can get to know people and actually be interested in their lives and part of me wants to say "Who cares if it's just for a summer?"
But then part of me is like, "Don't be ridiculous."
And that part of me is ridiculous. But sometimes it's hard to argue with yourself.
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