…or something. Or in other words, lessons learned by delving through some of my old paperwork of days gone by.<\/p>\n
It literally took less than a month at my undergrad school to realize that my biggest need was somewhere to belong, and that it wasn’t going to happen there. Inexplicably, I pieced enough together in the first semester (plus Interim term) to get by, which in retrospect was a mistake – my undergrad life was a 747 with three engines on fire plummeting to Earth, but for two years, I was convinced I could put that bird down safe.<\/p>\n
After that, I more or less gave up. I spent a lot – a LOT – of time building a mythology around a fictional alternate school, and spun not one but two different class final projects out of it. I was desperately looking for three things: a non-insane girlfriend, a real peer group of friends, and an authentic college experience. You could make a good case that I have now spent exactly twenty years trying to make all three happen at the same time.<\/p>\n
Throughout the undergrad years, I am flabbergasted at the number of notes laying out possible combinations of new teams and divisions for pro sports leagues. I distinctly remember noting in 1992 that “every league in North America could easily go to 30-35 teams” and I think it had happened by 2000. And the rules! The endless RPGs, Cyberball, reimaginings of how to render things into a system that would allow me to reproduce and analyze them on paper! What was that about, especially when I couldn’t get my head around SPSS and statistical analysis in political science?<\/p>\n
In 1994, I knew that politics was turning into a team sport, and that participation was directly proportional to ideology, and that it created a climate of moral imperatives where your opponent was not just misguided, or wrong, but evil and non-negotiable. Nailed it. My professor was amazed at my capacity for sarcasm and vitriol, which I didn’t apologize for at all, and wondered whether I might not need to develop my empathy for others. I think that’s the part where I point to the DSM-IV and say “Aspergers, son, recognize” but I think I’ve come around on that some in the last fifteen years. Others may disagree.<\/p>\n
Most of all, there was a scene I wrote in those undergrad years where my long-lost fairy godsister gave me the opportunity to go back and reset the clock. It amazed me, because I wrote the same thing six years later and remembered writing that, but not the original one.<\/p>\n
And the most telling bit of all – a quote I copied down, from the famous British intelligence officer turned Soviet spy, Kim Philby:<\/p>\n
“To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.”<\/p>\n
I wrote that down half a life ago. I knew all along. I just didn’t realize then that I knew…and I just didn’t remember now how much I knew then. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…or something. Or in other words, lessons learned by delving through some of my old paperwork of days gone by. It literally took less than a month at my undergrad school to realize that my biggest need was somewhere to belong, and that it wasn’t going to happen there. Inexplicably, I pieced enough together in … <\/p>\n