Reminiscing

Ever since I started going to UND, I've remembered PSU with fondness. Even though last summer I completely fucked up my life there, I still missed the place that was my home for 5 years.

However, today I actually remembered what it was like to NOT like PSU. I'm here in Denver at the GSA conference, and I was looking through the list of presenters to see if I knew anyone. I got excited because my PSU thesis advisor is giving a talk on Tuesday. Then I flipped to look at his talk, and he's presenting with asshole Colin.

Colin was my TA for a class I took a few years ago who I kind of had a thing for. He seemed friendly with me too, so after the class was over I friended him on Facebook. He ended up ignoring my friend request and then it was really awkward whenever I saw him around the building.

But whatever. It turned out that there were a lot of people from PSU here at the conference who I remembered didn't like me. That's when I remembered that most of my geoscience colleagues at PSU did not like me much at all. In fact, I had been shunned from my first field camp experience because they thought I was a wacky, music-obsessed, flirtaceous, dumb person with unrealistic goals for myself and weird humor. My second field camp experience hadn't been much better. My "friends" sold me out and got me in trouble for something that we all had done. I had to take the full blame for it. Then to add insult to injury, they paired me with one of them for the next exercise to be partners. While some people left field camp with good friends, I left it angry. I hadn't made the effort to make friends because of how I had been shunned the first time. As a result, they all thought I didn't like them, and so they didn't like me. Even the people I had gotten closer to during field camp weren't really friends afterward. They were more like acquaintances who never talked to me or hung out anymore.

In general, my PSU colleagues were competitive and nasty. This applies to both my geoscience colleagues and my music colleagues. Maybe it's because I didn't really fit in with either group because I was a double major. I don't know. I mean, there were some exceptions of course. But not many. I felt like everyone in all of my classes hated me and thought I was stupid. I had to spend time proving to them that I'm actually pretty smart.

And that's not the way it should be at all. The way it should be is how it is here at UND. Everyone in my department is friendly to me and nice. They value my opinion and ask for it. They are supportive and tell me that I did a good job on my presentations. I don't have to prove to them that I'm smart because they never doubted that I was. I don't have to prove to them that I'm funny and cool, because they always thought that.

Even when I got stressed out on the drive over here, people were nice about it. I got stressed out because everyone started drinking alcohol in the car, and I'm on probation and was worried that I would get in trouble for their drinking and they would resume my charges. This is how it went down:

Me: I should have bought cigarettes in there.
Jeff: You smoke?
Me: I stress smoke.
Jeff: So you're stressed right now?
Me: Yeah... you're all drinking and I'm kind of on probation... I'm just saying right now that I have no part in this drinking.
Jeff: We'll take the full blame for it.

And then later, after we got to Denver, Jeff took out another beer while we were driving to the hotel. But then he glanced at me and didn't end up opening it.

I'm glad that my colleagues respect me enough like that. I'm glad that they actually like me and that I don't have to prove anything to them. Because that's just the way it should be.

I may have seen three PSU people who I don't really like and who don't really like me. And all three of them told me that they were glad to see me. I'm not sure whether to believe them or not, seeing as how I don't trust anyone. They were probably just saying it to be nice and didn't actually mean it.