Dynamics

I should be unpacking right now. Or sleeping. Or doing the exercises we were assigned. Yeah...there's lots I should be doing. *shifty eyes* Oh well. This is more entertaining and relaxing, heh. Plus it gives that satisfying feeling of procrastination.

It's interesting, everyone said that when you go to college, particularly a place full to the brim of brilliant, driven overachievers, you stop feeling smart. Now, I really hope this doesn't sound like arrogance or bragging or anything, because that's completely not how I mean it...but even after two years at college, I've never had a problem still feeling smart--well, academically smart, that is. Not that I see myself as some genius or that I hold myself above people with lower grades--I'd hate myself if I ever felt like that lol--but I've always had an internal sense that whatever classwork we're doing, I'm up to the task, that if I put my mind to it I won't fall behind or disappoint myself or other people. And I've had that feeling all my life, and it's a nice feeling. (Certainly I have inferiority complexes about other things, like how much community service/activism stuff I do (or don't do), or whether I'll be a good teacher, or whether my ideas are interesting, or whether I'm fun to be with, et cetera et cetera...but straightforward academics has always been the one thing I really don't feel that way about.) But right now, for pretty much the first time I can remember, I have this nervous fear inside me that finally I've come to a place where I just don't have it in me to do what's asked or expected. I mean, for the past two days we've been listening to lectures, and I've been able to follow and understand about 95% of what they've been saying, which is pretty good I suppose, but I've still never been in a position before where what's expected isn't for me to do math that's already been nicely worked out for me, but rather for me to innovatively create and explore new math, and figure things out without anyone who can tell me whether what I'm doing makes any sense at all, because no one knows. And I just don't know if I can do that, and I'm so scared that everyone around me will just zoom ahead of me, making all these great discoveries and progress, proving new theorems, programming computer algorithms on programs I've never even heard of, and I'll just be left behind trying to get them to explain it all to me once they figure it out. And if they explain it, sure I'll be able to understand it. But that's not the goal here. And I'm just scared that everyone has learned more math than me and knows more about computers and the REU people will be thinking at the end of the summer, "Why did we invite that Rebecca girl here? She's nice and all, but she really didn't contribute anything important to the research. Oh well."

Of course it's ironic, since I can rant for hours about how math is supposed to be an innovative and creative field, filled with opportunities for discovery and exploration, and is not just about remembering what a teacher tells you and answering test questions about it. And yet, I suppose what I've really been good at all these years is doing exactly that. I just really don't know if, when thrown into the world of real, true, innovative, creative, exporative mathematics, I'll really be that good at it after all. It's a weird feeling to suddenly have about the one thing that all my life I've never had this sort of inferiority complex with. Maybe it's a good and healthy thing. And I suppose I'll find out over the next few weeks whether my worries are justified...

On another note, the dynamics of people never fail to fascinate me. I remember feeling the same way during admitted students week and during orientation; there's some specific energy that runs through a group of people all getting to know each other at the same time. I say "energy" because I'm not really sure what to call it--this specific mindset, dynamic, way of interacting, social code, whatever it is. Of course, I'm sure it feels different for different people. There are always a lot of little jokes, banter, laughing, but it's so drastically different from the joking around of a group of close friends; the subtext is so limited, restricted to only things in the immediate environment or things in the mainstream culture...so while hanging out with a group of seven people I don't know can be quite fun, and a lot of the chatter and banter is funny and amusing, somehow it takes a certain amount of mental energy for me to stay on this elevated level above a personal context...I mean like, being in an environment where no one knows me, however much fun we're having, after a while I just can't do it anymore and I need to fall comfortably into a setting where there's a deeper context for the interactions, jokes, et cetera, where they're based on personal things, where I'm interacting within a context of who I am and not expected to be constantly defining who I am more and more with each new thing I say.

Sometimes I wonder whether it would have taken me much longer to feel comfortable around some of the people on my hall last year if Andrew hadn't gone to California for a week without telling me. Not that we wouldn't have become friends...but since during freshman orientation, I was so worried, so distraught and preoccupied, and desperate to talk to anyone who was around about it, I ended up plunging right into much more personal and important interactions than I would have otherwise. Instead of hovering for several weeks around the environment-and-common-culture-based interactions, within the first week I was explaining details of the most intense (and, let's face it, kinda sketchy-sounding...) aspects of my personal life to some people, and leaning on them for support during a time I was very worried. I really think that made a pretty huge difference, at least for how the first few weeks or months felt.

I really wish, in a way, that people were more inclined to do that--spill out everything that's truly most important to them to people they're just getting to know. Of course, I understand the impulses against doing that...but wouldn't it be kind of nice? If in the first or second conversation you had with someone, you could be talking about the most important relationships in your life, what you're most worried about, what you're most passionately interested in and why, and so on, instead of having most of the conversation consist of little anecdotes carefully chosen to be lightly amusing and easily relatable-to by the generic college student (or whatever the specific peer group is)? A part of me feels like I want to get to know these people, really know them, who they are, how they think, how they feel, what makes them cry, what do they love most, etc., but since topics like that are taboo until you're already pretty close to someone, it's hard and frustrating. But obviously, I also understand at least in part why we don't do that; there's some sort of instinct to keep all of that guarded and reserved only for the people we somehow deem most fitting and worthy of being trusted with it.

Counting people in my life, off the top of my head, I can think of at least eight people that I feel completely secure being myself around. That makes me feel like one of the luckiest people in the world. Even if I do end up sucking at math research, heh.

Time for sleep!