MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
This could really go in E&C or TDS too, but I'll put it here in SLR for now.
At every 'school' type setting I've ever found myself in, my relationships with my fellow classmates always get off to a great start, then end up cooling considerably, to the point where I can't wait to GTFO. I'm sick of it, and am smokin' glad I'm now nearing the end of the very last classroom setting I'm likely to ever find myself in (2nd year of medical school). Still, I'm curious to know what the hell I've been doing wrong all these years.
I love to learn and talk about ideas. Every time I've begun a new academic program, I've had a pretty intoxicating-feeling honeymoon period. It just feels so fresh, and it fills me with hope that I'm FINALLY, at long last, among a crowd of people who are 'my kind of people', who'll mostly get me, who I'll be able to be myself around, and whom I'll form lasting bonds. This usually lasts a couple months. During this time I'll be very uninhibited and outgoing, and it'll feel very natural to be this way. (On a personality test given to me at the beginning of med school, I tested as an extrovert, for the first time ever!) At the time, it seems like everyone is doing the same thing, and 'trying people out', as it were.
But then slowly over the course of months, I start to pick up signs that whatever I'm giving off is not keeping most people coming back for more. That is to say, when I settle back down and re-become the introvert I truly am, very few classmates make the effort to keep connecting with me. Is this normal? Because it feels as abnormal as the aforementioned 'honeymoon period' feels normal!
I would have thought that in a program like medical school, I would have made at least a few very tight bonds. But although I'm respected from afar by many, for my writing and poetry skills as well as for my compassion in wanting to become a geriatrician, I've gone many days at school where no one has come up to me between classes and said a word to me.
I'm a very good listener. I always try to make conversations be about the other person, not myself. I'm interested and ask questions. And dammit, if I do say so myself, I'm pretty interesting, and have a lot of thoughtful perspectives on things. That said, I don't joke around much. It's not that I'm depressed or a downer. I'd even say I'm fun loving. But serious. And passionate and intense.
I don't find I've had this problem at workplaces. There, I go in fully comfortable wearing my 'public face' at all times until I clock out. I also am fully comfortable with the prospect of making no close friends at work -- I'm there to make a living, not a social life. Of course if I hit it off with someone, and becoming friends with them is natural, I don't fight this urge. But I don't feel any disappointment if this doesn't happen.
School is different. There, people expect to be themselves some of the time, and to make real friends. And from what I've seen, most seem to.
I have a feeling it has something to do with a flaw in my attitude or my approach. Would it behoove me to be more restrained when I first start a school program? Or to not expect to make friends, as on a job?
I know not every aspect anyone's personality comes through well online. But still, it would be of great value to me to hear from some people on here who've known me for a while. Be brutally frank if you must -- is there something about my general style you could really see being a turnoff in a typical medium-sized group of smart, self-motivated students?
At every 'school' type setting I've ever found myself in, my relationships with my fellow classmates always get off to a great start, then end up cooling considerably, to the point where I can't wait to GTFO. I'm sick of it, and am smokin' glad I'm now nearing the end of the very last classroom setting I'm likely to ever find myself in (2nd year of medical school). Still, I'm curious to know what the hell I've been doing wrong all these years.
I love to learn and talk about ideas. Every time I've begun a new academic program, I've had a pretty intoxicating-feeling honeymoon period. It just feels so fresh, and it fills me with hope that I'm FINALLY, at long last, among a crowd of people who are 'my kind of people', who'll mostly get me, who I'll be able to be myself around, and whom I'll form lasting bonds. This usually lasts a couple months. During this time I'll be very uninhibited and outgoing, and it'll feel very natural to be this way. (On a personality test given to me at the beginning of med school, I tested as an extrovert, for the first time ever!) At the time, it seems like everyone is doing the same thing, and 'trying people out', as it were.
But then slowly over the course of months, I start to pick up signs that whatever I'm giving off is not keeping most people coming back for more. That is to say, when I settle back down and re-become the introvert I truly am, very few classmates make the effort to keep connecting with me. Is this normal? Because it feels as abnormal as the aforementioned 'honeymoon period' feels normal!
I would have thought that in a program like medical school, I would have made at least a few very tight bonds. But although I'm respected from afar by many, for my writing and poetry skills as well as for my compassion in wanting to become a geriatrician, I've gone many days at school where no one has come up to me between classes and said a word to me.
I'm a very good listener. I always try to make conversations be about the other person, not myself. I'm interested and ask questions. And dammit, if I do say so myself, I'm pretty interesting, and have a lot of thoughtful perspectives on things. That said, I don't joke around much. It's not that I'm depressed or a downer. I'd even say I'm fun loving. But serious. And passionate and intense.
I don't find I've had this problem at workplaces. There, I go in fully comfortable wearing my 'public face' at all times until I clock out. I also am fully comfortable with the prospect of making no close friends at work -- I'm there to make a living, not a social life. Of course if I hit it off with someone, and becoming friends with them is natural, I don't fight this urge. But I don't feel any disappointment if this doesn't happen.
School is different. There, people expect to be themselves some of the time, and to make real friends. And from what I've seen, most seem to.
I have a feeling it has something to do with a flaw in my attitude or my approach. Would it behoove me to be more restrained when I first start a school program? Or to not expect to make friends, as on a job?
I know not every aspect anyone's personality comes through well online. But still, it would be of great value to me to hear from some people on here who've known me for a while. Be brutally frank if you must -- is there something about my general style you could really see being a turnoff in a typical medium-sized group of smart, self-motivated students?