The People I Have Been

This is a piece I have meant to write for quite some time so I think I'll write it now for no better reason than because I want to write and this is the only piece I can think to write.  I understand at this point that by writing this that it may point out some potential social issues I may have, but for now I'm going to assume this is a normal way to act.  Throughout the years of my life I have found myself in many different situations that have caused me to have to tweak my personality to fit some supposed role I have determined for myself.  Every now and then I look back and think to myself about how I behaved in some roles, and wonder what the hell I was thinking.  So without further interruption, here are the roles I of today believe I tried to play in past years.

Role #1 Child (Birth-7th Grade)
This one is self-explanatory, until I turned 13 I didn't really have the mental abilities to understand cause and effects of culture so I existed as is.  During these times I didn't find myself with many long lasting friends, which probably suggests something about who I am naturally.

I really had no choice!

Role #2 Mr, Irrational Confidence Guy! (7th Grade- 10th Grade)
I became this person too early, it would probably be beneficial if I hadn't become Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy until this day and age.  By that I mean I was extremely ballsy in talking to girls, and had absolutely no reason to have been (hence the irrational confidence part), but now that I believe there is an outside chance that I have something to give a woman there is no confidence to be found.  During this time I told a popular girl she was a tall glass of water and I was thirsty (note I was far from popular, likely because of comments like that), bet that I could date a girl only to brag about it semi-publicly like a complete asshat and have that be the reason she didn't date me and even at one point I was very close to dating a popular girl from the grade below me despite my lack of popularity.  What made me feel I was a person who was able to do those things successfully is beyond me, but I simultaneously envy and hate that little prick.  This role mostly coincided with kid who wanted to be popular because I felt a little inferiority complex from having a popular older brother in the grade above me.  I have long since gotten over that inferiority complex and consider it a great lesson toward becoming the man I am today.

I thought I could be cool like Fonzie...

Role #3 Intentional Outsider/Nerd (11th Grade-High School Graduation)
Entering my Junior year of high school I found myself embracing my natural nerdiness/ unpopularity and decided that I should live with it.  I think this is partially because I started taking AP classes so I was separated from the less intelligent cool kids, and thrown into a setting with a lot more people who were more like me.  I found that in these situations I preferred the company of the less popular kids because I didn't seem to have to act as much.  This led me to a renaissance of playing video games (usually spent my weekends playing, including typical 11-3 shifts on Xbox Live with friends) and discovering new music (birthing my love for 90s music.)  During these years I found my number of friends grow exponentially as I found that there was another group of kids in my own grade (including Toninho!) who were a lot similar to my usual group that I hung out with at that time.  Along with that, there were still some residual effects from Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy as I was still much more aggressive in the dating world than I am now, even though that included barking up the tree of the bet girl previously mentioned for a whole year, honk if you are surprised that was a fruitless endeavor!

...But I was always much more Urkell

Role #4 The Kinda Crazy/ Weird Kid (Freshman Year of College)
I was actually called out on acting this role out once, a friend of mine said he hated me when he first met me because I made it out like I did all these crazy things and was a wild person, but never actually did anything.  It was completely true, but I was in a completely new environment and am kind of an introvert, so I needed to adopt this kind of personality to meet people.  And you know what, it was successful!  I met most of my friends in college one fateful day Freshman year when some kids in my hall that my roommate knew found a box and pranked our room by having someone hide in the box and jump out of it to scare me when I answered the door.  I don't remember how (possibly because nobody else wanted to do this prank to people they didn't know) I ended up being the guy in the box as we repeated this prank on other doors across the hall.  I ended up hanging out with these kids a lot over the next few weeks and this became some of the best friendships I've had in my life.  Say what you want, but this was a turning point in my life as this was a month into school and I was already considering getting a transfer due to the environment.  I never followed through with it and am very happy about that in retrospect.  This is the time when Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy completely died out as I was finally able to appreciate how stupid and contrived a lot of my attempts to woo women were, leaving your name and room number with "(insert name here) is cute" on the whiteboard on someone's door is only going to get erased, not responded to.

Chase in the Box!

Role #5 The Playful Older Guy? (Sophomore Year)
I really don't know what to call this guy, a lot of weird stuff happened over the course of that year, and I found it to be an emotional roller coaster.  Before the school year started I spent a lot of my time flirting with girls at the grocery store I worked at to slight success at best (I've written about this in multiple posts before so I'm not elaborating).  This year I spent a large amount of my social energy on trying to meet Freshman girls at school, I was older and that had an effect on girls at that age.  I can't remember how I spent my first semester of that year, but it was the first semester I had ever spent as an undergraduate TA for a class, and I had a student start making moves on me as the semester came to a close.  I thought that was going to be a great thing for me, but somehow before coming back to school for Spring she ran into her ex-boyfriend, and needed time to "think" apparently texting "what's up?" fortnightly, is pressuring so she decided to make me aware of this by never speaking to me again.  I don't get subtle messages born of idiocy very well so I asked her about it and she told me so.  It was dumb, and she transferred out of the school at the end of the semester due to said idiocy (yes, I'm bitter.)  Later a girl I knew and her boyfriend broke up and she talked to me to get over it.  I started to become fond of this girl because of this (guys are made to be attracted to emotional vulnerability I suppose) and followed through with this feeling.  I even got blessing from the ex-boyfriend whom she completely hated at this point (a former student of mine and a damn fine kid at that.)  She was apparently never that interested and nothing panned out save for a date.

I also watched the Prisoner!

Role #6 The Random Information Guy (Junior Year)
I had a weird housing designation for this year, I was living in a single a mile or so from the rest of my friends, and often found that leaving my room was burdensome.  Needless to say I spent a larger chunk of that year than usual by myself, and even created this blog during this time.  I'm sure my personality in my writing is different if you contrast then with now (2 years strong), and back then I was definitely more spontaneous and weird than I am now.  When I was around people I was typically getting dinner with my friends and one of their girlfriends and sometimes some of her friends.  For some reason since she was the only new person I was getting used to I found the part of my personality that she enjoyed was the part that came out the most (because I apparently can't deal with being disliked) and that part happened to be the part of me that comes off as a weird sexual deviant.  You mention one too many things you read on Urban Dictionary, and some people will actually think you do this stuff.  As time went on I'm fairly sure she got to know the more mundane me, but the weird kid kind of took precedence for over the course of that year.  Overall, the year was pretty uneventful save for the death of my car, which I still need to blog about at some point.

Foolproof way to make friends!

Role #7 The Laid Back Senior (Fall Semester Senior Year)
This semester was a great time of my life, I wasn't taking overly difficult courses, I was graduating at the end of the semester, I was over 21 for the first time in my life and I was living off campus with some awesome guys.  I didn't go out nearly as much this semester as I had in other years because I had no reason to, I could have all the fun I wanted to have in my house with my friends.  In this semester I played a lot of video games and drank a lot of beer.  There really isn't much else to say about this person, he had his fun and did what he wanted to do, except for the fact I didn't really try to date anybody at this time due to the short window of time.

Role #8 The Manchild (January 2012-Now)
This was a trying time for me, I was unemployed, graduated and had no idea what I was doing going forward.  I also had no car, and had no friends nearby that weren't consistently busy.  I spent nearly all my time bouncing between my Xbox and computer.  It was probably one of the worst times of my life for the first month or two, but eventually I got used to it and managed to pass the time (Mass Effect, Arkham City and Fifa helped) and after a short time, a few failed job searches, I got my Grad School acceptances in and decided I was going to continue to be a manchild for a few more months and then go back to school.  During these months I reinvigorated my love for Spongebob, watched a lot of cult and B-movies and then went back to my house at my old school for a month before the graduation ceremony.  This phase is directly responsible for my recent shift in movie and music tastes, gaining a taste for "so bad it's good" films and indie rock.

If you Insist!

Role #9 To Be Determined Dude (Now)
I'm in a new setting and, as I always have, I am going to have to assume a new role.  Usually these roles come organically and I don't need to consciously decide what person I'm going to be next, so lets give it time and see what I will think of current me next year.  This probably sheds a decent amount of light to people what it is like to be me, I still don't know if this is normal, but it's my normal and I'm just trying to be myself.

New Setting, New Life

Hey all, since the last time I wrote I have been completely busy making a new life for myself!  By that I mean I have finally began the graduate school that I have been alluding to for a few months now!  It has certainly been a different kind of world for me these last few weeks and I was thinking that instead of writing another piece about Dan Uggla's arms (which are still huge), I should actually tell you all about how I feel about this new life.  First of all, being a graduate student is fantastic.  You get to kind of live like an undergraduate except with more work and responsibilities, which is fine because in my case I have been given an office to share, so rather than kill time between classes and during the day, I have a place to return to and do some of my work.  I have also been notably more of an adult, going to bed before midnight and waking up in time to go to my office early and get my mind sorted out before classes start.  One thing that has really surprised me is that I have been consistently spending most of my weekdays in the math department for regular working hours, yet by doing this I have been able to have free weekends and am even going to be traveling over this coming weekend to hopefully see one of my favorite pitchers become the MLB's first 20 game winner!  I'm sure these free weekends will become a luxury in due time as classes start to pick up and homework becomes abundant, but I have been enjoying the ones I have had thus far.  

Nobody talked about this trade enough...

To deserve my office, I have been given the responsibility of being a Teaching Assistant (or TA for you folk who love their acronyms) for a class in the department.  For obvious reasons I am not going to mention the school name, class name, student names, my name nor anything vaguely identifiable about this course.  All I will let you know is that so far I have loved having this responsibility and have enjoyed every interaction with my students.  I guess I can also use this time to brag about how good I look in a blazer, believe me when I say that I am a rather handsome fellow to have teaching you math.  I have found the other people in the department to be welcoming, which I always appreciate seeing that meeting people has always seemed like an odd thing to me.  It is amazing to me to wonder what causes people to meet, since everyone seems to have no interest in other people when you see them walking down the street, and even when meeting someone, what causes you to want to see them again?  Social commentary/awkwardness aside, I've found a solid foundation of people to talk to when I need help or just to entertain myself for a little while without having to stray too far from my office!  But enough about work, how about we discuss a little bit of playtime, because all work and no play makes Chase a dull boy!

Don't forget frozen!  Dull and frozen.

As I mentioned, I have been able to spend a large amount of my weekends worry free, and even some of my weeknights!  For being more or less a stranger to everybody moving into my house a few weeks ago, I have found my living arrangements quite comfortable and don't believe I have a single thing to complain about in that department.  During the weekdays I tend to spend my off time at my house, and have rarely found myself bored.  My small sample size of weekends here has proved to be better than my undergraduate time, where I have yet to end a weekend without something to ponder or a story to tell.  I've had a few former students that I have known come up on the weekend and show me the ropes as well as introduce me to some people whose company I have found to be entertaining.  But even when I am not trying to have fun, I have been able to find enjoyment out here, such as walking from place to place.  As I have noted before my undergraduate school was predominantly male, which may even be an understatement, and this school is a lot closer to 50/50, if not more female!  So when I am walking from place to place as my schedule dictates, I am often presented with something nice to look at as I walk, which I appreciate very much.  I am not even exaggerating that I feel like Psy (watch this video and enjoy it, it is perfection) every time I walk somewhere.

ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Unfortunately this great gift is not without it's costs, because on those same walks where I have so much to look at there is one thing I can't help but notice, that being how miserable everybody looks.  Listen here kiddies, I don't care if its 9:00am on a Monday morning, if you are walking around on a college campus in this day and age and you are not even pretending to enjoy yourself, you are a truly sad person.  Maybe it's only because I have been on the other side and seen what it is like to be out of college and then return at a young enough age to be able to take full advantage of returning, but it seems to me these spoiled kids have no idea what a great time of their life they are just moping away!  Ladies and gentlemen, this is what college is, you are a young person in the prime of your life thrown into an environment filled with other people your age, where almost any action you take part in can be rationalized by saying "I'm in college, now is the time to try it," you are physically able to perform nearly any action you will ever be able to do in your life, and if there is anything (no matter how strange) you would ever like to try, you are probably no more than a mile from someone else who shares this desire and would probably partake in it with you.  Reread that last sentence and find any reason to be sad.  I know some of you are thinking "Hey Chase! You are clearly forgetting to mention how hard classes are!"  To those people all I can say is, I'm a grad student, my classes are much more demanding than anything undergrads are doing, and to tell you the truth, it is much much easier and enjoyable than anything you will be doing in the real world.  If you need any more reason to believe that college is the best place on Earth, remember this, Jamarcus Russell was successful in college!

I used this guy and successful in the same sentence, without using "not"!

So long faithful readers, and don't worry undergraduate school, I will always have a soft spot for you and your students, but I'm gonna go have the time of my life now.  More on the way!