I want to get cought up with my days, so here is what happened wednessday in a summarized form.

It was an okay day, but strange.

It started off well enough. Calculus was fine. We aren't even doing any real calculus yet, but I can tell we are about to do limits (we are doing secant and tangent lines now, and limits is friday on the silibus, I think).

I actually had a conversation with the guy from my clac/compsci class during calc. That was nice. He was a freshman in college too, but he already took AP calc in HS and went his senior year. His plans were similar to mine, it seemed- to transfer to a bigger school afterwards. I also learned his name.

Then, the next period(language) was a bit strange and sort of stressful. The teacher was identifying each person with their picture, and my name was the last that she identified, and she used my name when proposing hypothetical scenarios. It was kinda embarassing, but I got through it.

Then, though, I accidentally somehow built mirroring rapport with the person sitting beside me, or either there were a ton of coincidences. The thing is, we are not similar, the teacher used us in the same example once, but I didn't talk to her, or even acknowledge that she was there. When I would change hand positions, she would change the exact same way, and it really freaked me out. It was down to the point where I would have my left arm propping my face up, and my right arm on my lap, and she would have the same, then I would move my right arm to the desk (and it was not during writing or anything, just to get comfortable) and about one or two seconds later, she would do the same. It even happened with complete postural changes, and it happened about over 5 times in a row ( only counted for about half of the time). Eventually it broke when we had to start taking notes. Still, it was strange. Maybe it was just a great coincidence, or maybe the two of us being used in an example somehow caused her to attach rapport to me. It is also possible that she has taken psychology and is aware of rapport, and was doing it just to screw with me or as an experiment.

I didn't acknowledge that anything was happening, though. I assume that it won't happen again, it was just one of those situations where I didn't know what to do. Do I try to break the rapport? It is obviously accidental since we didn't interact at all. Do I just deal with it? But then it feels very strange, almost like I was a puppeteer in some way, and I don't like that feeling.

Chem kinda made me nervous. We are going to have to start doing labs next week, which I hated in high school. I was hoping that she would just assign us groups, but she asked the class "Do you want to work with partners or alone", and almost everyone said partners, so she said we will be working with partners. Then she asked if we wanted to choose our own partner, and almost everyone said they did. So, that didn't work out well. I am thinking about just working alone. If that was an option in the first place, it should be reasonable the that would would be doable on your own. If not, there are several people from my HS in that class, and maybe one of them will work with me. I am really not looking forward to that, though. I hate labs with a passion.

I know sociology was a day ago, now almost two, but I want to record how it went.

It was okay.

I actually started off in the wrong class, and advanced CS class. I wasn't late to sociology, though. The rooms were right next to each other. I came into the class right on time, but all the desks were taken except for 2, both of them in the corner near the projector, and with the crowd of kids who didn't exactly look like they cared too much for the subject.

I took a seat anyway, and tried to be as friendly as possible, but I didn't feel like I was overly welcome with them. The seat in front of me was still not taken, and right after I had settled down, a girl came in and sat in the seat in front of me. Apparently she had been in the wrong class too, as she said something about them giving her the wrong room number or something. She put her books on my desk, and was talking to me, but I was so shocked by all the interaction that I was basically just smiling and agreeing with everything. Then I handed her her books from off my desk after she was settled, and she thanked me.

She was very verbose to the teacher through the lecture, so I didn't feel too awkward that she had talked to me.

We had to take a pretest for the teacher to get an idea of what we knew. She also asked which of us had what background(if this was our first year, if we had sociology before, etc.). I thought the test was pretty easy. I had read the Wikipedia article on sociology before, and I remembered some of the stuff, and was able to reason through most of the rest.

I turned in my paper right after the girl in front of me, though, which is always unnerving for me. I feel like the teacher is going to think I cheated. Especially if both she and I do good or get similar scores, I feel like she will think I cheated. I don't know exactly how I did, but it seems like I did good since I most of the answers seems fairly apparent to me. I only hope that everyone did good so that she doesn't look suspiciously at me when she knows I am only technically a senior in high school, and I make a good grade on the pretest over something that I should have never seen before (but I do analyze people all the time, so I feel like I have at least some experience in the field, but how do I explain that to her if she asks? "I watch people a lot and have developed theories of society because I think it is necessary for me to integrate and interact with it." I would look like a loon.

Plus, at the end of the test, someone behind me tapped my shoulder a few times, apparently wanting me to give them answers. I don't know if they had been copying me the entire thing, but it would be silly to copy someone on a pretest, and I was hiding my answers like I always do, so I doubt that was the case.

I also met a guy with the same first name as me, which is fun because my name is semi-rare for guys in this generation. She was calling roll, and my name was a few after his, and we exchanged looks and smiles. From what I could tell in the class, he was a decent guy, and I would be friends with him.

One of the guys in the corner though, who I didn't particularly like and acted rude to the teacher walked out behind me. I held the door for him, and surprisingly he thanked me.


Sorry mods who have to approve these, I just really want to write, and writing in word seems to block my flow. I guess I could type it here and transfer it over, but I don't mind it being public, and I kinda like the thought that others may be able to read it and be interested.

I had one of those strange lucid moments today. They seem to be happening quite often here at college. It is only the first week and I have had two. Or maybe it is the nootropics increasing my mental faculties. Or maybe it is part of a decline that I am not fully aware of, and my reasoning is declining, causing me to come to false realizations.

So, in this instructional complex, there are 4 levels, and in each level there is a lounge for people to sit. I think the original idea was to be able to sit at the level of your class if you show up a bit early, but it seems like that is unlikely what it is really used for considering what I have observed.

Basically, the first 3 levels are always full of people, or at least full enough that you can't sit anywhere without sitting by anyone. The 4th level, however, is almost empty. Indeed, there have been times I have been there and I have been the only one.

Even with the people being as nice as they are at my college, I am still afraid to sit on the lower levels. But it is not just fear. I get an overwhelming type of bad excitement around that many people. It is kinda difficult to explain, but there are people everywhere, and they are all talking, and in a room like that, I feel like I am constantly trying to decipher voices from the mass of people, and everything seems to be "swimmy" with my attention. I can't even concentrate at all, because there are so many inputs, and my processing speed admittedly isn't good enough to keep up.

I don't really have any real friends yet, so I just go to the 4th floor, and it is really nice, actually. Sometimes there are other people up there, people who remind me of people I have been brief friends with in the past(like just in a tech class or something, then we never see each other again), normally people who you can tell obviously have asperger's or some type of ASD that impairs social sensing ability.

I honestly don't mind these types of people, often I prefer them because they seem to be much nicer in a passive sort of way even though they can get annoying since they don't know when to stop talking. But I normally find their obsessions to be interesting. I think if anyone can obsess over something, there is obviously something interesting about it, and if you actually listen to them, you can pick up what it is, and then you can see the object in a new light.

Anyway, I was sitting up here on the 4th floor for a one hour interlude between my classes, reading random wikipedia articles on my phone and observing the people around me from my perefrial vision. I know a decent amount about autism and asperger's both from friends and from researching it. I do kinda have some ASD traits, and I can become more obsessed with things than the average person, but my obsessions are not as strong as anyone with asperger's, and asperger's behavior is markedly different from my sort of social dysfunction. I am odd and misfitting, but in a different way.

There had always been a running thought of "do I actually have asperger's?", but I never really confirmed or denied it. I don't read the symptoms and think "Yeah, that is me" like so many people with it see to do.

So, as I sat up here, I saw quite a few people who ACTUALLY have these sorts of social impairments, and it was obvious that I am not one of them. I don't think I share the same type of air about me. Theirs comes across as almost robotic or innocent. Mine comes off as cold, hesitant, insecure, skeptical, and observant in a paranoid type of way (although I am not so paranoid any more, the air remains, I feel).

For the first time, it dawned upon me that I definitely do not have asperger's, and I probably do not have an ASD unless it is some really obscure point on the spectrum.

Yet I still feel so far removed from society, almost inhuman, and I think that was a tough realization: that somewhere beneath this avoidant behavior is the me that built it, and that me is not normal,...

[ Continued ]

This morning has been less than comfortable. I went on twitter to check the news, and the first posts I saw were from a girl who I had liked in highschool, and who may have liked me, but I avoided.

It was just a flood of thoughts, like regression to that obsessive thought process. And with it comes the immense guilt and regret that I have over the way I handled the situations. It is a barrage of thoughts and memories, and forced thoughts of how I screw up, and I feel weak against it.

It is silly that things like this affect me so much. Shouldn't this be over? Just yesterday, thoughts of here evoked no emotional response whatsoever, she was just a person, but now it is like she is cutting into my brain again.

I just need to pull it together by 2:00, so that I don't act depressive in my first sociology class.

From my first day at college, it actually seemed very strange to me, but because it was so familiar. People always say that going to any college, even a community college like this one, is a huge difference from high-school, and you have to make all these adjustments, and how everyone is so mature, but I don't know how much of that I agree with.

The most surprising thing was that my peers were... normal people, like me and everyone in my highschool. I don't know. I was thinking that I would be going to the school, and everyone would be in "adult mode", but it was strange to realize that were were still kids. Even the older adults who were students were "kids" in the sense that I am. I don't know, it was a pretty shattering experience that everyone isn't suddenly corporate and mature once you get into college. To be a peer to adults, some of them in their late 20s, 30s, or older, was just immensely strange.

I think it kinda shattered some sort of illusion that there is even a distinction. I think we are all always "kids", we just have to act more formal/professional for certain occasions. That is the exact opposite of what I would have expected. I would have thought that there was some sort of line or something that once you cross, you enter the "adult" zone, but now it just seems like it is a contruct, like there is no such thing as an adult or kid, only younger and older people.

I think this is very interesting, but at the same time it is scary. People who are like me are the ones who are managing the world. They don't have everything together, and they have some secret mindset that they get when they reach a certain age. They are just people trying to do what they think is best, or what benefits them the most, and they are using basically the same mind as me and my peers. The only difference is experience, that they have been trained in that and have done it for a long time.

The same applies to the people who can legally drink and everything. They don't have some sort of superior discretion by the time they are 21. I am sure their reasoning improves, but only as gradually as it always has.

This realization that life is a growing process like this is amazing. One part of me thinks "I can't believe I didn't realize this before", and the other thinks "This can't be right".

I guess now fully understand when I have been told "no one is perfect". I always just assumed it to mean "humans err", but now I see this whole other meaning behind it. I don't know, maybe everyone else just realizes this at a very young age, and it is not a bit deal, but it has taken me a long time to figure it out (and I don't think it is just from college, but from the many different experiences and advices I have had recently).