The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 1: SoCal in the Summer

I've probably made this clear before, but even though I am a college student, I've never lived much like one.  Well, at least not like the type of college students movies and popular culture love to portray.  I've only been to a few parties, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't hang out in the campus café, and you can probably fill in the rest.  My life is basically eat, sleep, class, homework, YouTube, Hulu, Google Reader, blog, and maybe play some video games.  I do have some very good friends, but they normally fit somewhere within the comfortable rhythms of my life.  Truth be told, it gets rather boring sometimes.  It's not that I don't like adventure, it's just that most of the experiences college students "should" be having don't appeal to me that much.  Wild parties aren't my scene.  

My whole life has kind of been this way, actually.  From the time I was very little I have been a recluse not so much by choice as by vicious cycle.  Example: because I don't go to parties, when people ask me to go to parties with them, I tend to say no because I don't know how to handle myself at a party.  This then makes people less likely to invite me to a party next time, which is unfortunate because the only way I would go to a party at that point would be if someone I knew invited me and/or went with me.  

The thing is, though, that I want to go out and have fun.  I want to really feel like I'm a college student instead of a high school student with more homework and a dorm room.  And sometimes, I do.  When this happens, I remember it as an event of great importance.  I can really savor it because of its rarity in my life.  Take, for example, yesterday.  I went with six other people to a friend's house to hang out and watch the World Cup.  We shouted at the television, ate burgers, mourned our team's loss, then tossed some people in the pool to cheer ourselves up.  Then we went to the beach.  Now remember how I said that I tend to be a recluse?  Despite loving the ocean and having lived in SoCal for the last two years, I have not been to a California beach since the first time I went to one in seventh grade.  Fail.  But I was redeemed yesterday when I went into the ocean with my fellow college students and we messed around and had fun.  When we got tired of the water, we played frisbee on the beach.  It was perfect.  It was an experience I hadn't realized I needed until I'd had it.  I felt like a real, proper college student for the first time in a long time.  It was also the first time that I really appreciated the advantages of living in SoCal and that there are experiences I can have here that aren't possible in my native Pacific Northwest (I'd still rather live there, though; my home state is simply the best).  

This isn't the only time that I've felt like a college student.  The very first time was less glamorous and more filled with duct tape.  But that's a story for tomorrow, for now I must prepare for a round of five-hour laser tag.  If I actually get to do this tonight without some unforeseen problem throwing a wrench in the works, this will go down in history as one of my coolest weekends ever.