vovat | Campus Chronicles (Reply)

I had an interesting dream last night. No, not the one about the diminutive con-artist with the white trash mother, although that was interesting in its own way. I mean a more realistic dream about going back to college (I've had quite a few of those recently, for some reason), and being reminded of how annoyed I was that we had to leave so often. For me, college was somewhat of a mixed bag. As opposed to high school, in which I was somewhat of an outcast, I actually was able to hang out with other people. The thing is, I didn't always, because I was generally way too nervous to approach anyone. I'd frequently go to meals at the dining hall alone and hope someone would ask me to join them, which happened sometimes, but not all that often. I guess I could say that there were a fair number of people I got along with, but not much of anyone who actually sought out my company, and that made me depressed. Still, as long as I was at college, I felt there was at least a chance of interaction with peers, while back at home I just fell into the same old lonely routine. That, combined with the fact that I lived so far away from campus, was why I never particularly cared to go home for breaks. When everyone was leaving for the first Thanksgiving break of my freshman year, I actually cried, and I'm not someone who cries all that often. I suppose I was quite out of the ordinary in this respect, as the college I attended was known as a "suitcase campus," with a significant portion of the population leaving every weekend. Of course, they probably had friends at home, which I didn't. Another thing that bothered me was how, after finals, I had to leave campus pretty much immediately. Apparently the university was so stingy that it wouldn't even give me the chance to unwind after finishing for the semester. Along the same lines, every year gave us less time between moving in and the start of classes. I wanted more time to just relax in the new environment, but I'm sure I was in the minority in that respect.

I will say, however, that most of this applied to my earlier time at college. By my senior year, many of the people I'd been friendly with in earlier years had moved out of the dorm, and I spent most of my free time on the Internet. The thing was, the Internet itself was also largely a college discovery for me. I hadn't had a computer with Internet access prior to living in the dorm, and it seemed like there was so much online to explore. By my senior year, I'd met several people on the Internet, including