Social Lubricant

Alcohol is the best social lubricant. My experience at a frat party the other night wrought this revelation. Now, typical Serena behavior is to tease, cajole, engage, converse etc etc etc. My normal mannerisms tend to be interpreted as flirting and according to my friends I flirt with everything from inanimate objects to old grouchy secretaries. But, apparently I was really going @ it the other night with this guy. The next morning I woke up with the sense that I had done something very wrong, but just couldn't remember what is was. IE: my new theory - alcohol is a social lubricant.

Anyways, debate is hard, impossible, daunting, scary and among many other wonderful things. I honestly can't remember being this scared in my entire life. It's as if I've lost my ability to articulate my thoughts. The other day I found myself using like in a sentence...as a verbalized pause. I never do that! It's as if I have such a strong desire to do well and speak well these next few weeks ... that I'm somehow sabotaging myself, and performing even more poorly than before. No matter what I do, I feel like I'll never be able to catch up to my teammates. They all keep saying things like: "I respect you for being here and trying this," or "Don't expect too much," or even better: "no novice has ever come in without experience before, and there are lots of good reasons why". They are all nice people and I knwo they don't mean to be discouraging, it's just that they don't really have time to babysit me or hold my hand through this process. No one can really accomodate my lack of experience. For some reason, I always seem to end up in this situation. It was the same with golf (I didn't join the team until my soph year, and I was always a year behind everyone else) and with speech (I didn't even start competing until mid junior year in SOS and @ Regionals for Impromptu). Somehow I've always managed to come out on top, DVC Champ for golf and State for speech ... I don't know if that's going to happen with debate, but I think that if I buckle down and actually do some hardwork I at least won't be a detriment to the team.

On other notes, it amazes me how fast I'm losing touch with my friends. Lucy and I keep having these prefunctory conversations online, with both of us dashing off in different directions five minutes after we exchange hellos. Jill and I haven't talked in weeks! It's so frustrating. I think I'm going to start making more of an effort to stay in touch with people as opposed to just assuming things will work themselves out on their own. As a sidebar to that, I have to say that I did have a really good conversation with John today, it was nice to hear about how he's doing @ Berkley, his classes seem really interesting. And then Ashish and I got a chance to catch up last night too after almost a week of missing each other and having unsatisfactory AIM conversations.

My days @ debate start early with a run and usually end up with a late night (early morning) walk on the beach along the lakefill. Mark came with me one night (probably Tuesday night) and we had a deep, long conversation while we were walking. I really like him and his lack of airs. I hope him and I become better friends. My room is gorgeous and huge and my roomie and I are getting along really well (I have no desire to move into my actual dorm with my real roomie come the start of school....groan). Tonight Catie came up, as did Andrea, Beth, Zeljka, Debs and Drew...we grabbed dinner @ Dave's Italian, toured the campus a bit, and then headed down to Navy Pier for the fireworks over the lake. We got to meet up with Mike and his friends from IIT while we were down there too, I didn't realize how long it had been since I had seen him!

This probably doesn't make sense as I'm becoming ridiculously sleep deprived these days. But anyways, I'm going to read a few more chapters and then head over to Frat Row for a bit.

<3 Serena (from college :) ).

PS: Mark said that my picture doesn't do me justice (apparently i'm "much better looking in person") so I'm going to change it. Leave me a comment if you like the new one better! *mwah!