<p>I have an odd sort of personality. The more I go through life, the more unsure I become of who I am. I can't quite define what kind of person I get along with most easily, and my history in high school social life has taken a rather confusing route.
(The ensuing description/rambling will hopefully be easily-relatable-- that's obviously why I'm posting this)
Around most people and in groups I haven't much to say; yet, this isn't always true, even within the same social parameters. I moved the summer pre-sophomore year, and the entire fall semester was a bit dull as I slowly acclimated to the new social climate. All of sudden, spring semester, I was dating this flippant, jokingly anorexic, overly sarcastic, cheerleader-esk personality of a girl. She was also ridiculously perceptive and secretly intellectual (read extensively, IQ >160 on multiple official tests, etc.) Anyone cognizant of our existence would attest to the fact that we hardly ever stopped laughing, and certainly never had a lull for one moment. This ended the next summer (last summer) due to various unfortunate details I shall steer away from, but the effect of this person in my life has been momentous in altering my aforementioned perception of myself.
(At this point I would like to take a break to define my definition of dating to a form of specialized friendship as to avoid responses from taking a stance on this matter on whether I should date or not)
As far as guy friends go, I do have quite a few... but I am nowhere near satisfied, as I have had experiences such as the one above that have enlightened me on my current standings: though I have some fun, some laughs with these friends, I realize that there must be people out there with whom I could be much more compatible.
I'm not an intellectual snob, I realize that I am a fortunate byproduct of the genetic lottery; yet, this does not mean I am immune to the realization that my peers have less wit, don't pick up on subtleties, or simply do not comprehend many higher-level ideas/jokes/etc. It may be simply a coincidence that the only person in my school that has a comparable intellectual capacity happens to be the most compatible person for me that I've ever met, but the converse with my other peers tends to support the idea that I need to go somewhere with more intellectuals...</p>
<p>This has been pretty much a throwing-up stream of consciousness, and of course I've left out much, and it might not make any sense. I am simply trying to convey my predicament. I am wondering what other people think. I am hoping that there is someone out there that has had some sort of tentative high school social life comparable to mine, only to find asylum in college, with opportunities for perfect friendships (i.e. with perfect compatibility) abounding. Or maybe there are others that have not yet moved on to a better chapter of life, still wading through the dark in high school as I am...
Thoughts? Hope? Inspiration? -sigh-</p>
<p>I also realize that my personality has not been adequately portrayed (or even at all?) and I don’t expect anyone to be able to know me in order to address my post. But I’m sure there are plenty of people who hope college will be the answer to their surely existent, but unsatisfactory social life. And of course people that have found the answer, too.</p>
<p>Maybe I should avoid posting things like this late at night. My edit window is gone, so what’s up there stays.</p>
<p>Practice, hmm. Again, it’s not that I don’t have friends; I get calls to go out places all the time, and I do have fun… but I just feel that things could be so much greater, as I have had such experiences as above that have shed light on what could be in terms of compatibility and friendship.</p>
<p>If you’re actually as smart as you think, then you may not find compatibility in college. There’s going to be a lot of above-average people–but very, very few really intelligent people. At least insofar as my average intelligence can observe.</p>
<p>But let’s be realistic, what’s the probability that you aren’t a lot less intelligent than you think?</p>
<p>I don’t see what the point of inflating oneself or otherwise falsely conveying oneself on an anonymous site such as this has any point. I never thought this post would come out coherently or the way I wanted it too, but oh well.</p>
<p>Depends on what college you go to.</p>
<p>I’m not Fields Medal material, but in my immediate surroundings there are but a few at my level. I imagine I’ll be pretty average once in college… and I hope so… I’d much rather be surrounded by equals and smarter people.</p>
<p>What I’ve noticed is that the smarter you get (intellectually and/or academically speaking), the more you strive to be around people who are as smart as you or smarter. This doesn’t mean you can’t relate to people who are not as academic as you are. </p>
<p>When you go to college there’s still going to be dumbasses. If you’re really as smart as you claim to be, you should already know that the vast majority of the population around the globe is ignorant and they’re happy being myopic so you’re gonna have to learn to live with them whether you like it or not. Of course it’s possible to stimulate your environment by picking a location, job, or college that is more intellectually rigorous (given the choice), but no matter where you go there’s always going to be people you consider as less intellectual than you, and you are going to wonder how the heck some people made it to wherever you are.</p>
<p>Oh, still a junior, unfortunately… looking at some top schools though.</p>
<p>I think this has strayed away from what I had intended for it to be. I really just wanted people to relate with me and/or comment on their experiences with the transition in social life from high school to college. </p>
<p>I didn’t want this to be a focus on intelligence, but I included that as it seems to be a big factor in my social life from experience. And it’s not that I am interested in discussing philosophical ideas, mathematical concepts, etc. 24/7 (though a nice debate every once in a while isn’t too bad); intelligence affects characteristics such as wit and perception as well.</p>
<p>A lot of people have fun and seem satisfied with their social lives, but only because they are not aware of what could be better (Ignorance is bliss). That’s why I included the anecdote of the particular girl; that, and a couple similar cases, has opened my mind up to greater possibilities, and thus I am not satisfied with what I have stepped down to.</p>
<p>eh, becoming increasingly uncertain of who you are during adolescence isn’t at all odd. I really didn’t “find myself” or settle into my own identity until I was 19 or 20. Just about everyone has existential crises multiple times throughout the course of high school, and it’s only worse the smarter you are. </p>
<p>Honestly, coming to a top school was great in terms of being around large numbers of intelligent people, etc. But I found that the greatest factor in ending the uncertainty that had defined my life in high school was just getting older. I got more mature, I wasn’t constantly flooded with fluctuating hormones, and my life settled down. So just hang on for another couple years, because in all honesty, it will get better whether or not you end up at an “intellectual” school.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I can’t personally relate to you because I went to a small charter high school with many very intelligent kids (also, I’m either not as intelligent as you or I have a better ability to derive fulfillment from the companionship of people who are not my intellectual equals). However, your case does remind me a lot of my younger brother. Like you, he felt he was much smarter than the rest of his peers in high school and because of this he expressed concern that he was never going to be able to truly connect with someone. Also like you, he met a smart, funny, perceptive, sarcastic girl and he has told me that this relationship marked a shift in sorts of his expectation of what kind of fulfillment in society was possible, given the right person or people.</p>
<p>The slight wrinkle in this parallel timeline of sorts which I present to you is that my brother met his first girlfriend during his first quarter at Stanford. He’s now finishing up his second year, has moved on from the original girl, but I know he no longer believes that it is impossible to find perfect - or at least fulfilling - compatibility in another person.</p>
<p>So to sum up, I think there’s hope for you if you go to a college where you can be reasonably certain you’ll be surrounded by intellectual peers. How elite of a college you require depends upon your ability to seek out and connect with those people who might prove to be compatible with you. These people exist in every large university, but it may be harder to find them within a larger student body.</p>
<p>@mochamaven
Wisdom. This also reassures me as Yale is tops on the list right now.</p>
<p>@woolybugger51
To the parenthetical comment, probably the latter.
I also don’t believe it’s impossible… under different circumstances (i.e. not high school).
Thanks for the anecdote about your brother, very helpful.</p>
<p>I think we can close this thread now. Thanks to everyone, especially the last two. I feel a bit more confident about the future now.</p>
<p>I don’t think top colleges are full of intellectuals. I think they are full of the wealthy. But the smaller class sizes and other benefits may help.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I totally understand the point you are trying to make, but I will share my experience of socialization as it pertains to intellectualism from high school to college and hope it is somehow applicable… lol.</p>
<p>For me it went in the opposite direction. My high school friends and I, our main activity was sitting around discussing philosophy, psychology, politics, math, science, literature, art, all sorts of things for hours on end. I ended up pretty much limited to this group of friends because nobody else would hang out with us as a group because we made them feel stupid. Which was silly, really, because most of us were just pompous asses and discussing for the sake of discussing, but that was just how it was. And I didn’t go to any kind of an elite private school or anything, just the local public high school. We did other things too, but that was the bulk of our activity. When we got to college it got to the point that they were just sitting around trying to out-intellectualize each other to the point that I no longer wanted to be around them anymore, so we stopped talking. In my third year of college I have yet to find a replacement for the intellectual and social stimulation I got from my social activity in high school. I just spend more time reading alone to compensate. </p>
<p>I definitely am surrounded by more intellectuals overall, but they are still not going to choose going out to eat and discussing 19th century political theory with me over going to a party and playing guitar hero, which is really not something I can relate to. What I think is fun seems to be fundamentally different from what the other kids think is fun, and while that was a problem in high school too I found a definite niche there that I did not find in college yet.</p>
<p>The group of people who want to sit around having deep discussions all the time is very, very small. That you found people in high school who were willing to do this simply means that you got lucky.</p>
<p>You’re an adult now, so you can learn to think like an adult. Sometimes, it’s not the rest of the world that needs to change.</p>
<p>“The group of people who want to sit around having deep discussions all the time is very, very small. That you found people in high school who were willing to do this simply means that you got lucky.”</p>
<p>Yup, pretty much.</p>
<p>“You’re an adult now, so you can learn to think like an adult. Sometimes, it’s not the rest of the world that needs to change.”</p>
<p>I don’t really think being more interested in going to bars and parties than intellectual pursuits would make me more of an adult? It’s not like I think my peers are stupid or not worth my time, I just have no interest in the things they choose to do after a certain time of day. They have little interest in the things I want to do, too, so I am hoping there is a mutual non-judgment thing here. lol</p>
<p>I’m not saying you have to go to parties (and I’m definitely not saying that will make you more mature). But you need to understand that if intellectual pursuits are the only things you enjoy, you aren’t going to enjoy being with very many people.</p>
<p>Oh, I do understand. And you’re totally right, unfortunately that situation just is what it is. I do have fairly broad interests that aren’t all intellectual, but they are mostly solitary activities. Thankfully I am not especially prone to loneliness and my boyfriend is a homebody kind of person, too. </p>
<p>I do like a few other things, like hockey and football, and I am thinking of going out for the equestrian team. And there are some decidedly NOT intellectual tv shows I like. lol. And I am really into filmmaking. It’s just, besides maybe sports, those aren’t things people tend to make a social event out of very often. And even with sports, I am a girl so sometimes it can be hard to find the right sports crowd to hang out with that I actually fit into.</p>
<p>The only thing that I find kind of upsetting is that when I find people who ARE interested in the things I like to do, they usually have no interest in doing them on the weekend since that’s when there are parties. And I’ve been to parties with an open mind several times, and it’s just not something I like to do at all. So I usually do volunteer work and homework on the weekend and most of my socializing is during the week. Which makes the weekends kind of disappointing sometimes since people seem to have so much fun together and I don’t really get to do anything.</p>