Well, I just got home from hanging out with a friend I was close with in high school. To be honest, I had the biggest crush on him when he played Perchick in "Fiddler on the Roof" and I was Golde. We've kept in touch intermittently throughout college and have met up a handful of times, always hoping to see each other more after each encounter. It's not a romantic thing, it's an innate feeling of connection with someone who knew you before you knew you. To this day he is able to say, "that's so like you to do that" or say that or whatnot. And he's right, which calls into question the nature of friendship. Are true friends those that have seen you from the beginning, who remind you of where you've come from? I always ask myself that after I see someone who I have known for many years. No, I then remind myself, friends are the people that accept that you've come from somewhere, whether they too remember it or not, and take that as part of you. I think that it might be easier for someone like my good friend of this evening to have that acceptance, but I think all good friends learn it.
And so my worry begins. Today I found out that I have a bunch of reading to do before I start graduate classes in July. While I should have anticipated this, I didn't, and finding out about it shocked me a bit. I realized: This is going to be something challenging. There might be people who are better at this than I am. I thrive on competition, but do I search for it to make myself better? No. I've always been inwardly driven enough to have that motivation some get only from competition, for example, Paris from "Gilmore Girls." I'm more Rory-esque, or would like to fancy myself as such, that I learn because I like it and do well because working hard isn't a question, it's a certainty.
All of this ties together, I swear. I'll say it. I'm worried that making friends in this program is going to be difficult because of our varying levels of education, professional experience and drive. Yeah, I worry someone might be better than me. Ok, I should prepare myself that someone will be better than me. That's more realistic. Suzanne Malveaux of CNN was the commencement speaker at my graduation last week and she commented that coming in first shouldn't always be the goal. Sometimes you don't learn from that. And so, I need to wrap my mind around other places. And with people, too, not just academically. I know that I get really overzealous when I meet new people and that can be a turn off.
Be yourself, yeah?
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