Minimizing Judgmentalness Of My Surroundings

The rest of the world is judgmental about 20 different ways in which I am a weirdo.  I went to MIT so that only 15 of those ways would be deemed weird by my classmates, who would celebrate the 5 ways the outside world finds us all weird.  When I found the East side of campus, I met people who only judged me for being weird in 5 ways and celebrated the 15 ways that the rest of the world is judgmental about and the 10 ways that the West side of campus still judged us for.  When I found Senior House, I met people who only thought I was weird in one or two ways and celebrated: not just the ways that the rest of the world judged all MIT undergrads and not just the ways that West Campus were judgmental about the residents of the East-side of campus and not just the ways that Senior House residents were thought to be weird by the rest of the East-side….but also celebrated the one or two ways that Senior House residents themselves thought I was weird.  It was an amazingly powerful and rare experience to have, for the first time in my life, all my different flavors of weirdness celebrated, without having to suppress aspects of myself to be truly socially accepted.  What I needed and wanted from MIT in general and found living at Senior House in particular was a place where both the start and end points of my college emotional development would be “normal,” where the journey and end point would not be distorted by social norms that I did not personally value.

2 thoughts on “Minimizing Judgmentalness Of My Surroundings”

  1. I value the fact that, 12 years after having graduated, my friends from that time in my life are not especially surprised or concerned that I’m still contentedly living far outside of the same social norms that Senior House didn’t impose on me, including the ones that people there still thought weird.