The Pariah and the Chameleon

Many moons ago, I was a relatively carefree student at Georgia Tech, maintaining decent grades (off and on the Dean's list, usually on) and somehow staying sane. After three years on-campus, my parent decided to send my sisters to live with me. While this is a Long story for another time, suffice it to say many thing changed, least of which was moving off-campus and the subsequent expenses of a commuting and running a household. I had one job already, but student slave wages being what they are, I needed another to cover my (greatly increased) expenses.

This, coupled with the fact that I was up to my ears in my senior coursework and was going to be spending a great deal of time in the College of Computing's labs, tipped the scales of a TA job from the "run like hell, just isn't worth it" side of the scales to the "hmm, good idea!" side.

I'd avoided the TA route before because most TAs were relegated to the festering swill of the (TA-driven) freshman weed-out courses, and to a lesser-extent the required sophomore "Tell me you want more!" bitch slaps. But as bad as the weed-out bullshit was, the inbred social scene amongst the TAs was far worse. But I digress.

So, during my senior year at Georgia Tech, I signed up to TA a junior-level operating systems course. Everyone in this course was there because they wanted to be there, not because they had to be, so they generally cared about learning the material and doing well. This made quite a difference in the attitudes of my students, and made the whole experience quite enjoyable. My motto was "give me an excuse to pass you" -- if they genuinely were trying, I'd go out of my way to help. But again, I digress.

As a TA, I gained access to the coveted TA lounge -- and its couch, which I stole many a nap on. One night in this over-coveted space, I was grading papers or something when I overheard a conversation between two of the other TAs. They were talking about bicycles. The details elude me now, but it reminded me that my bike was was currently chained in front of the Student Center, missing a wheel that an enterprising vagrant had liberated one evening a month or so prior.

So I sort of muttered to myself "Ugh, I still need to get my bike fixed." At this point the conversation suddenly stopped, and one of them turned to me and asked incredulously, "Is there anything you don't do?" To which I replied, somewhat startled, "...um.... yeah? Tons of stuff? ...why?"

It turns out that I had a (rather larger-than-life) reputation as someone who well, did anything and everything, and at the same time maintained a near-holy image of someone above the petty bickering of the highly active CoC (and in the case of the TAs, highly inbred) social scenes.

While I did have many interests, they were relatively shallow, as nothing quite appealed to me enough (and/or I lacked sufficient funds) to truly jump in. But this wide-spread nature went well beyond mere "interests". By this point in my college career, most of the folks I still hung out with (during those rare moments of peace) were in different colleges altogether, themselves having a pretty wide swath of interests and operating within their own social circles. I was loosely involved in quite a few groups.

During my freshman year I was half-jokingly given the nickname of 'The Pariah' due to this arms-length distance, known to everyone but not truly part of anything (save one group that I still never fully jumped into and eventually walked away from). There just never was anything that really appealed to me, though I did have a general sense that there seemed to be something I was missing; something that everyone else seemed to have. In hindsight, they didn't really have it either, and I sort of knew it but never quite put the pieces together.

So I never fully engaged, staying on the edges, keeping my options open, doing what others roped me into or what interested me -- with a general attitude of "whatever comes along" underpinning it all. My interests and experience continued to spread, advancing in bursts and then more slowly retreating as I discovered new things then got far enough into it to realize it didn't interest me that much after all.

This pattern would repeat many, many times over the years, though "que sera sera" has increasingly been augmented by a "I must make my own fate" attitude, more carefully choosing what I get myself into. But I digress yet again.

Fast forward nearly a decade, to this past Saturday night.

I was at a large drum circle, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. As it approached pumpkin time, I packed up my stuff and said my round of goodbyes. Almost to my car, I got caught up in a conversation that rapidly turned to of gossip -- the latest fallings-out and goings-on of a couple of the circles I'd largely removed myself from. Thrown in for good measure was the gossip about me that was spawned by my newly-single status. In the middle of this, it struck me just how little things had truly changed. I am still that pariah, but perhaps a more accurate description is a chameleon.

I used to cast about looking for a group to be part of, thinking that one arbitrary point was as good as another. I'd shift myself around to "fit" in these different groups, emphasizing a particular facet or two of myself, but never being able to bring all of myself to bear. Placed against against a different backdrop, I'd often look completely different. Different, but never whole.

So which one is the real me? For all of my skirting on edges, it turned out that I'm actually the center, and and it was the groups and/or the people that were off-kilter. They may have been, no, are part of me, but they are not me. I am spread far and wide, greater than the sum of my parts, and no matter the container, it will be outgrown and discarded.

So what's the point of all this rambling? All things are worth knowing, and specialization is for insects.

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