(no subject)

You know, reading philthecow's old entries on CTY (linked from her last post) reminds me of something that I've sometimes wondered recently...what would have happened to me if I had actually gone to the CTY-type program (Duke TIP) that I really wanted to go to the summer before 8th grade? I think it would have made a big difference for me, but I'm not sure if it would have been good or bad. Probably some good, some bad, but it's interesting to think that one little decision would have probably made a pretty major difference in my personality... (On a side note, this is one reason why I'm so indecisive, or at least why I'm resistant to becoming more decisive--because I notice that especially for me, little things end up making a big difference in much bigger things that follow. So it's important to think about all of the little things before I make a decision. Of course, I guess that can have bad effects, like, oh, when you wait a bit too long in booking a hostel and the place where you really wanted to go gets filled up. But I think that's actually going to work out OK, hopefully... But yeah, if you've seen "Run, Lola, Run", that's a good example for what I'm referring to. There's little tiny, inconsequential differences, and they add up to huge differences in the outcome. Of course, it's true that the outcome is actually the most unfair in every permutation, at least if I remember right from when I watched it when I took German 3 years ago. So that would say that it's useless to try to have any control those little things. But I still think it's worth taking the effort to be aware of the little things, even if, for better or worse, they can't be controlled. Not that I'd WANT to have control over all of those little things, because that would be boring, and I don't trust my decision-making skills that much anyway. But OK, now I'm rambling...)

Anyway, as it turned out, my parents convinced me to go to the Jewish summer camp that I had gone to for 4 years before that instead of to Duke TIP. I ended up liking it (I guess...), and at least trying to fit in with the crowd of upper-middle-class Midwestern Jewish kids. And I went back the next year because of that, and ended up joining BBYO in high school, which I most likely wouldn't have done if I didn't know the people from camp. And so I tried to be "normal", both there and in school. And it kind of worked, in some ways. But I think I really can say that I fit in much better around weird people than by trying to be normal, and in high school, I ending up being the kid that some people were nice to, some weren't, but nobody really understood. (And even if there were people more like me, I probably wouldn't have made an effort to be friends with them anyway...) Of course, there's something to be said for at least trying not to be TOO odd, or at least being normal enough not to make "normal" people uncomfortable. And I definitely had resistance to joining SWIL, as sildra can tell you (well, she did actually tell the story I'm thinking of, which I'm actually somewhat embarassed by now, here. Of course, you also see the amusing juxtaposition between that memory, and the memory that one of my closest friends from high school had of me, of being the nerdiest kid he had ever seen, despite my efforts otherwise...I think that sort of emphasizes the point I'm trying to make here.) And I also talked about my resistance to joining SWIL here (in my first LJ post).

But when I read about people who went to CTY, and actually found other people who were just as nerdy as they were... I wonder if I really would have been a lot happier if I had actually gone to the TIP summer program. I think I would have found people who I had more in common with, and I wouldn't have had to try so hard (and so...unsuccessfully, mostly...) to be "normal" to have friends. And I might have even broken some obnoxious habits that I didn't end up breaking until my freshman year at Swarthmore. Of course, it is true that if I had done that, I might have ended up being completely unable to relate to normal people, which would have been kind of bad. Especially since at that point, after 7th grade, I really WAS completely unable to relate to "normal" people (or, well, most people...yeah, I was sort of...difficult in middle school...). Where now, I think I can get along with a fair number of "normal" people reasonably well, at least on a superficial level. And it's also true that even if I met all of these great people in the summer, most of them wouldn't have been in St. Louis. And I would have realized how [insert list of condescending adjectives here relating to lack of sophisticated rational thinking ability that I'm probably better off not spelling out] my parents really are, which might have caused some problems since I still had to live with them for 5 more years. So in the short term, maybe it would have made me a lot less happy. And of course, at Swarthmore and with SWIL, I did finally learn all of those things about coming to terms with my own nerdiness that other people learned at CTY. So maybe it really is better that I didn't do something like that earlier? Well, I don't know. Obviously, it's fairly inconsequential, in the end, but...it's interesting to think about...