a sense of joy and then a panic

A couple weeks ago (during the pre-break work crunch), I left the Graduate Research Center around 9 p.m. and decided to catch the shuttle back to the metro near the undergrad dorms.  There were four girls in the bus shelter when I got there - it was cold, but they were going out - teensy dresses, leather jackets, jesus-christ-heels, flat-ironed hair, mascara so thick it looks like feathers, gum.  The uniform for going out, especially in the under-21 set.  All white, all at least trying to look loaded.  The undergrads at AU have a reputation for being dumb rich kids from Maryland and the surrounding area whose parents were like "ohhh-kay, I guess you can go to college in DC but be careful sweetie" - the grads, by comparison, are like the underdog team in any given sports comedy (Georgetown, GW, and Johns Hopkins take turns pointing and laughing, but the price is wrong, bitch). 

These girls would have intimidated the shit out of me when I was an undergrad, by sheer virtue of looking like they knew how to dress, knew how to be cool, had friends, were going "out," etc.  They crowded around one iPhone watching the "Rack City" video like it was some kind of scandal that they were watching it at all.  Then other girls, and one guy who was clearly trying to play the pimp role, joined them - by the time the shuttle got there, there were about two dozen of these little rockstars ready for their big night out.  They took up nearly the entire bus, and treated the thing like it was their personal party limo.  Everybody preening in the window. 

And then there was me, and one other grad student in the class I'd just gotten out of - both of us had our earbuds in and gave each other customary curt nods - and at the back of the bus, by herself, one lowly undergrad who was not invited to the Party.  And she wasn't ugly, or frumpy, but she was still wearing makeup junior high style and her hair was unkempt and her clothes weren't cool.  I looked at her and the gulf separating her from the Cool Kids and thought, "there but for the grace of God go I."  In fact, that was me as an undergrad, and it was awful.  I remember trying to get the look right everyday before class - because I sure didn't go to parties - and just failing all over the place.  Just never got there.  I had the chance to be part of a preppy-cool clique early on in college and I simply could not keep up appearances.  Because when it doesn't feel natural, it feels like you're trapped on some hideous piece of gym equipment, climbing up but slipping down and under so much strain. 

I have no clue how I got out of it (a similar thing happens on the Law & Order episode "Quit Claim," when Connie shows the judge a picture of her in college to show how women's appearances can change, and the judge is like, "point taken").  Time, maybe?  Finally going to a school that I feel fondness and "spirit" for?  Those two years in Nebraska getting drunk in a more "low-key" environment?  A year pretending to be a presentable date for a normal Nebraskan boy?  Is it wearing jeggings and bandage dresses, God help me?  I don't know.  I don't know how I fell in with the popular crowd in my program, how I became one of the girls that "brings the party," someone who "knows people."  Natnari always jokes that you have to schedule a social appointment with me two weeks in advance.  There is much closer correspondence between professionalism/competence and popularity in grad school - it's actually a very good thing to be friends with the faculty and staff; the resident bombshell of SIS is staff.  It's definitely a good thing to have a white-collar job - the more networked, the better.  But the art of Being Cool is also much more intense because we're that much closer to adulthood, and I'm not falling off the StairMaster this time, and I just do not know why. 

So I kind of wanted to go up to that girl on the bus and tell her it'll get better (I feel like I shouldn't use that phrase anymore, but how else to say it?).  But it's not like I don't get imposter syndrome either - imposter at my job, imposter as a student, imposter as a popular girl most of all - it's not like I don't half the time feel like "inside every Chris Hargensen and Sue Snell is a Carrie White clawing to get out."  I'm just trying my best not to let the two "sides" merge.  I do not want to be a Mean Girl, which is why I maintain my effort to be (almost) everyone's friend - a goal I originally set up to just not be unpopular again, for the love of all that was good and holy.  But I can see how easy it would be, to be a Mean Girl, especially when you've always been on the wrong side of the bleachers and you're on this nouveau-riche high.  Especially when being on the wrong side of the bleachers in your teen years graced you with a constant, consuming sense of resentment (ressentiment?).  And especially when, like Gatsby, getting rich didn't get you what you really wanted all along.