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Wed, Oct. 20th, 2004 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterOne of the strange things that's happened because of my taking up LJ around the same time I graduated from college is that I feel so inexperienced now. When I was a kid, or in high school, or in college, I always had this view of myself as being very mature, as though I understood the world. I felt wise and knowledgeable. And while I felt like I would be learning things about life all the time, my own self impression was that of age.
Now it's completely different, probably because of the change of environment. It sort of started with LJ and getting to know people of different generations as friends, not as "friends of my mom" or some such thing. I think in school it's so easy to exaggerate that one year difference between juniors and seniors, or the three year difference between freshmen and seniors. It feels like an unbreachable gap (especially for dating purposes). I mean, back then, I would think of people two years younger than me as "my sister's friends." Now they would probably be the closest people to my age that I've interacted with in a while (in RL). Also, back in high school, I always knew more people in the classes below me than above. Plus, I am a big sister, and as such, have often felt older and wiser (yes, that sound you hear would be my sister choking back laughter).
In college things were a little different -- I got to know the classes above me more, and as such, was sort of the baby of the group for a bit. Not me, per se, but I was the little soph playing with the juniors or something like that. In LJ, things feel even more like that. Possibly for the first time in my life, I got to talk to people who have been reading genre for longer than me, people who have a much better understanding of the sci-fi/fantasy tradition and canon and etc. I never had this sort of community in high school, because we were all discovering the same books at roughly the same time. That was wonderful too, in its own way, just as it's wonderful to show up here and say, "I like such, such and such" and have recs pour in.
I think another big factor is work. Obviously, since I am a recent grad, most people are work are older than me. The people at the bookstore were split between a generation a little older than my parents, and then a few people around my age (give or take ten years). The people at work now are, I think, about ten years older than me, and everyone is talking about not even marriage (which is still a scary thing for me to think about), but having kids and raising kids and kids blah blah. I sort of eye them and my brain goes into panic mode when all this is mentioned. And because it's work, I have to act as though people much older than me are my peers, which is very, very disconcerting. It took me a very long while getting used to calling people older than me by their first names instead of Mr./Ms. So-and-so or Blah ahyi/shushu (auntie/uncle). It still feels extremely unpolite to address emails by first name to people higher up on the corporate ladder.
And so now I feel like I'm just really starting to crawl around in the world and only beginning to get a grasp on things. I feel very displaced and lost also. I can't quite figure out (still) where my life is going, despite the new job, or what the meaning of it all is, or anything. And it's especially odd and frightening watching my parents grow older and worry more about health issues. Mortality seems much closer now than it did when I was in school.
Of course, I will reread this a year or five years, or many more years down the line and shake my head at just how little I know.
Now it's completely different, probably because of the change of environment. It sort of started with LJ and getting to know people of different generations as friends, not as "friends of my mom" or some such thing. I think in school it's so easy to exaggerate that one year difference between juniors and seniors, or the three year difference between freshmen and seniors. It feels like an unbreachable gap (especially for dating purposes). I mean, back then, I would think of people two years younger than me as "my sister's friends." Now they would probably be the closest people to my age that I've interacted with in a while (in RL). Also, back in high school, I always knew more people in the classes below me than above. Plus, I am a big sister, and as such, have often felt older and wiser (yes, that sound you hear would be my sister choking back laughter).
In college things were a little different -- I got to know the classes above me more, and as such, was sort of the baby of the group for a bit. Not me, per se, but I was the little soph playing with the juniors or something like that. In LJ, things feel even more like that. Possibly for the first time in my life, I got to talk to people who have been reading genre for longer than me, people who have a much better understanding of the sci-fi/fantasy tradition and canon and etc. I never had this sort of community in high school, because we were all discovering the same books at roughly the same time. That was wonderful too, in its own way, just as it's wonderful to show up here and say, "I like such, such and such" and have recs pour in.
I think another big factor is work. Obviously, since I am a recent grad, most people are work are older than me. The people at the bookstore were split between a generation a little older than my parents, and then a few people around my age (give or take ten years). The people at work now are, I think, about ten years older than me, and everyone is talking about not even marriage (which is still a scary thing for me to think about), but having kids and raising kids and kids blah blah. I sort of eye them and my brain goes into panic mode when all this is mentioned. And because it's work, I have to act as though people much older than me are my peers, which is very, very disconcerting. It took me a very long while getting used to calling people older than me by their first names instead of Mr./Ms. So-and-so or Blah ahyi/shushu (auntie/uncle). It still feels extremely unpolite to address emails by first name to people higher up on the corporate ladder.
And so now I feel like I'm just really starting to crawl around in the world and only beginning to get a grasp on things. I feel very displaced and lost also. I can't quite figure out (still) where my life is going, despite the new job, or what the meaning of it all is, or anything. And it's especially odd and frightening watching my parents grow older and worry more about health issues. Mortality seems much closer now than it did when I was in school.
Of course, I will reread this a year or five years, or many more years down the line and shake my head at just how little I know.
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(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 04:30 am (UTC)It is easy to exaggerate, and I've seen people behave pretty ridiculously based on that exaggeration. I think, though, that people are growing and changing at such an extreme rate until at least college that the gap can also actually be much larger than it will be later in life.
I had a friend who was a high school senior when I was a freshman. I had a massive crush on him, and when we got back in touch a few years ago, it turned out he also had a massive crush on me, but was afraid our parents would really, really disapprove. And when I told my dad this, he said, "That was a very mature thing to do. He was a young man and you were a little girl. It would not have been appropriate." After I got over a little indignation, I realized that Dad was right: Matt really had been much more experienced and much closer to where he was going than I was, at the time. (I don't think that means I shouldn't have dated him, but there was clearly a difference in experiences and maturity and etc.) Now I think nothing of a 25-year age gap or more with my friends, but I think that 4-year age gap was more meaningful then than a 25-year one is now.
The weird thing was when this has happened with my family. My godfather is 14 years older than me, and until I graduated college in '99, he was clearly Older And Wiser, one of the grown-ups where I was one of the kids. Now we interact as peers. Neither of us has kids. I'm married and he isn't. Somehow this cancels out a good bit of the age difference in family terms, so we can talk like contemporaries and have a good time together.
(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 05:06 pm (UTC)Definitely agree. I knew a friend who was dating someone about three years younger than him while we were freshmen in college. While three years isn't all that much outside of school, the gap between their experiences of just getting into college and worrying about sophomore year high school was very strange.
Right now one of the weirdest but coolest generational changes is starting to get to know my parents' friends as people and not just assorted aunties and uncles. It's just so interesting listening to them talking about their kids, who are my friends or my sister's friends, and trying to see things from their perspective instead.