“You don’t belong here.”
“Why did you bother going to Duke if you’re going to get an English degree?”
One of the first people I met at Duke, a fellow freshman, asked me this. I told them that English had been my favorite subject in high school, so I wanted to pursue a degree where I could improve my rhetoric. (Until I discovered Public Policy, which led me down another, unexpected path.)
So many of my fellow students were pre-med, pre-law, pre-tech or pre-academia. And since I was none-of-the-above, I was at a loss for what direction to go in. I decided to take classes I was interested in rather than what would be best on my resume. And for this, people looked down on me.
I don’t know if this choice was something I regretted—some of the classes I took for fun wound up being the most meaningful.
But anyway. What I mean to say is, that while I was at Duke, I was painfully aware that I didn’t belong to any of the many cliques there. I didn’t really have a friend group I could consistently count on. I fell in and out of various friendships, and never really felt like I had a “pack” to rely on.
People’s idea of fun didn’t match mine. Drinking, partying, going out til you got blackout drunk — that didn’t appeal to me. My idea of a great night was one of playing board games, reading books, or watching movies.
