The title of this post is misleading because no, I didn’t go to my 10-year high school reunion, but I do have friends and acquaintances who did attend and either sent me photos or posted photos from the event on Facebook. To any and all photos and mentions of the event, I am completely indifferent and have zero regrets that I did not attend and was not in town to attend.

I’m not sure where this indifference really came from. I look back apathetically at all areas of my schooling except for middle school, which I found to be the period of my life where I not only became the most confident (and perhaps the most stubborn), but actually realized I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I look back fondly on Lowell and Wellesley for its academics, but for social areas, I feel apathy to disdain. When I look back at Lowell, I just think of a lot of conformity, a lot of “everyone’s doing it, so we should do it, too!”, and a lot of pressure to try to outdo everyone else. Lowell, being over 60% Asian by the numbers (but probably more accurately 90% in a sea of black-haired people), was not at all representative of the real world and probably skewed my vision of what the “real world” could look like. Wellesley, with all its high achieving “I can conquer the world” women also skewed my vision of how competitive the world is. I’m not very competitive by personality, and I felt the weight of the world on me there. And I felt like I was failing.

While it would be nice to see some people I haven’t seen in over ten years now, I think that Facebook has allowed me to electronically “keep in touch” with those I somewhat cared about but didn’t feel the need to reach out to and vice versa. Maybe if Facebook didn’t exist, I would have a stronger inclination to care that such an event just passed me by.