I hated high school. I barely spoke a word to anyone during my 4 years. Flunked out of college due to depression and alcoholism. Still, I never thought I’d miss the sort of forced-social aspect of them both. It is so much more difficult to make new friends as an adult whenever you’re not around people as much. It also becomes difficult to find spaces to meet people your age, I’m still in ‘acceptable’ clubbing and drinking age, but there’s a very high chance that the people that’d be out would be college students, and I’m not really looking to befriend people with that much of an age gap (it’s not a big age gap, but the life you live as a proletarian just existing is so much different than that of a college student that it makes it difficult to form meaningful connections with them). Idk, I felt like there weren’t places for 17-19 year olds to meet others their age when I was younger, so maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.
Also something to be said of Amerikan social infrastructure lacking to all hell especially in non-major cities. You can’t really understand the impact car-focused design has had on our ability to socialize until you go somewhere that was built for social interaction and cohesion. In Peru, it felt like there was shit to do everywhere and everything was much more conveniently placed (outside of the extremely rural areas), contrasted with the inconvenience and inherent social isolation of going out here.
I hated high school. I barely spoke a word to anyone during my 4 years. Flunked out of college due to depression and alcoholism. Still, I never thought I’d miss the sort of forced-social aspect of them both. It is so much more difficult to make new friends as an adult whenever you’re not around people as much. It also becomes difficult to find spaces to meet people your age, I’m still in ‘acceptable’ clubbing and drinking age, but there’s a very high chance that the people that’d be out would be college students, and I’m not really looking to befriend people with that much of an age gap (it’s not a big age gap, but the life you live as a proletarian just existing is so much different than that of a college student that it makes it difficult to form meaningful connections with them). Idk, I felt like there weren’t places for 17-19 year olds to meet others their age when I was younger, so maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.
Also something to be said of Amerikan social infrastructure lacking to all hell especially in non-major cities. You can’t really understand the impact car-focused design has had on our ability to socialize until you go somewhere that was built for social interaction and cohesion. In Peru, it felt like there was shit to do everywhere and everything was much more conveniently placed (outside of the extremely rural areas), contrasted with the inconvenience and inherent social isolation of going out here.