{"id":36951,"date":"2018-12-13T08:55:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=36951"},"modified":"2018-12-13T08:55:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:55:32","slug":"weekly-worries-will-i-still-fit-in-with-my-high-school-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2018\/12\/13\/weekly-worries-will-i-still-fit-in-with-my-high-school-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Worries: Will I Still Fit In With My High School Friends?"},"content":{"rendered":"Now that exam season is coming to an end, winter holidays are fast approaching. Some people choose to spend the time relaxing around the city, while others visit family and friends. I am one of the latter- every year, I\u2019ve gone back to my hometown and spent the winter holidays with my family.\r\n\r\nSince this is a blog post, you probably already know that it\u2019s not that simple. It\u2019s never that simple.\r\n\r\nGosh, I love the brain.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"A<\/a>\r\n\r\nIn first year, my brain decided to mess around and add an internal conflict on top of<\/em> the conflict I already feel when other people are involved. Yeah, I\u2019m not great at the whole \u201ctalking to other people\u201d thing.\r\n\r\nSo today, we\u2019re going to talk about relationships (on a side note, if you\u2019re interested in reading more about the student experience with relationships check out the HealthyUofT Instagram page).\r\n\r\nAlright.\r\n\r\nWith no evidence to support this, apart from my own internal dialogue, I\u2019ve always felt like I\u2019m on a different wavelength than everybody else. Not in the \u201cI\u2019m special, you\u2019re not\u201d kind of way, but in the \u201cthey all get along so well, what am I missing?\u201d kind of way. Even with my high school friends, most of which I\u2019ve known since the fifth grade, I always felt like it was really difficult to \u201cfit in\u201d, for lack of a better term.\r\n\r\nThey were all friends with each other, and I was just there<\/em>.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s not the best feeling, and there was nothing I could do to get it to go away. At least, not with the way my mind worked back before university.\r\n\r\nSo now I\u2019ve introduced the initial inner conflict, let me tell you about the new one that cropped up after I left for university.\r\n\r\nI think we can all agree that we change a whole lot when we go to university. We grow as people, in myriad different ways, and that growth will be different for everybody.\r\n\r\nWhen I came to U of T, I was forced to face realities that I had been able to avoid back at home, and because of that, the way that I interact with people has changed so completely<\/em> that at times, I don\u2019t even recognize myself.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m getting a little off topic, but bear<\/strong> with me.\"A<\/a>\r\n\r\nHere\u2019s the thing, though, I mentioned earlier that I\u2019m not from Toronto originally- I\u2019m from Calgary, and I\u2019m one of the only people in my friend group who left the city for school. That means, on top of my personal growth, they\u2019ve all been hanging out with each other as if we\u2019re still in high school\u2026 One of them even confided in me that she hasn\u2019t made any new friends since starting university in 2015.\r\n\r\nWhen I visit them, I am acutely aware of this.\r\n\r\nThe dynamic is so natural for them, they\u2019ve all grown surrounded by each other. When I show up, I feel like that one raisin cookie on a plate of chocolate chip cookies- if you kind of squint, everything is fine, but if you look closely you can tell that I don\u2019t belong there.\r\n\r\nEssentially, it\u2019s a continuation of how I felt before university. But now, it\u2019s amplified by the fact that I have no idea how I\u2019m supposed to act around them.\r\n\r\nWhat if they don\u2019t like the person I\u2019ve become? What if there\u2019s no room for a recently found voice at the table?\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s been years, and I 100% still struggle with this. But I have learned a little over the years that\u2019s helped me rationalize my fears.\r\n\r\nEven if the standard advice is \u201cjust be yourself, the friends that truly matter will accept you for who you are\u201d, I think we all can agree that that snippet of wisdom only goes so far. What I have been telling myself is that really, it\u2019s not fair <\/em>for me to assume that they won\u2019t be able to adjust to who I am.\"A<\/a>\r\n\r\nEven if I can\u2019t see it, they\u2019ve changed too. And while, in the long run, if they aren\u2019t in the position to accept me for who I am it\u2019s true <\/em>that they may not be the friends for me, that\u2019s not my business. There\u2019s nothing I can do to change that- my only job is to be myself, and a good friend.\r\n\r\nIf we\u2019re too different to click as friends, that\u2019s something I can think about if and when it happens. But it doesn\u2019t change the fact that there are people out there that I do <\/em>click with\u2026 How else would I have changed the way that I have?\r\n\r\nIf you want to hear more about student experiences with relationships, check out the HealthyUofT Instagram, and feel free to engage in the comments if you have any tips or tricks for handling the nerves that accompany seeing friends for the first time in a while!\r\n\r\nHappy Winter Holidays!\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nNow that exam season is coming to an end, winter holidays are fast approaching. Some people choose to spend the time relaxing around the city, while others visit family and friends. I am one of the latter- every year, I\u2019ve…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Weekly Worries: Will I Still Fit In With My High School Friends?”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Weekly Worries: Will I Still Fit In With My High School Friends?”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":36954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,66,67],"tags":[86,78,152,9315,9307,25453,151,85,25506],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36951"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36959,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36951\/revisions\/36959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}