Plagued with doubt
I've never been worried about going to university. And in terms of coping academically, I'm still not worried. But a conversation with a veteran university student yesterday at that social dinner instilled some rather unsettling doubts about handling the social aspect of uni. He spent a good half hour throwing all kinds of advice at me: get to know a lot of people in your block; make friends widely; don't cut yourself off from the Malaysian community; but at the same time keep a close group of friends who you can safely say you "belong to", if only for rooming purposes next year, you don't want to belong to lots of different groups only to find out in your second year that you don't belong enough to any one group to find people to share living quarters with; get used to being a small fry in a very large pond; don't compromise on studying in order to further your social life; don't try and juggle a job, socializing, studying, cooking, grocery shopping and clubbing in your first year or you'll regret it...
By the end of the "seminar", I was seized with chronic doubt. I am the kind of person who will make friends widely and end up not being in any one "group". But I'm not the kind of person who is instinctively social, meaning that I can't make friends for no reason other than to "know people"...and I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, because I hate the superficiality of mindless socializing...but maybe it is, if I want to get anywhere and get anthing done. Everything is about contacts and networking these days. So...well, broadly speaking, I am no social butterfly. I am not inherently likeable, and I can't pretend to be, either (well, not for long, anyway - I think I could pull it off for a while). Also, I was initially convinced I could juggle a temp job and the rest of uni life as well, but now I'm not so sure...
So to conclude, let me voice a rather pathetic, pitiful, typically teenager-ish but completely valid thought:
What if I don't make any friends?
And another one:
What if everyone hates me?
All right, that's enough whining for one day. I should keep my insecurities to myself. Anyway, I'm going to take a much needed afternoon siesta. I was up far, far too late last night.