Teenage Angst

I'm starting to warm up to these girls a little bit, but it's still hard to get over the difference between a bunch of adoring twelve-year-olds and a group of sixteen-year-olds who are too cool for school (or CTY in this case). The engineering girls are nice; they actually asked me to eat lunch with them today and were excited when I agreed (maybe because there are only three girls in their whole class...). And the neuroscience girls aren't mean, they're just not interested in me, or anything without a penis, at all. And one of them wore a polo shirt with a popped collar today. For real.

At lunch I went over to talk with my girl in math for awhile and see how her day was going. She was sitting with the other girls from her class, and they were complaining that there were no cute boys in their class. When I got up to leave after a few minutes one of them asked me if the boys in my class were cute...and then I was sad.

After lunch I was on scheduled presence outside the cafeteria and this really tiny little boy came out and started talking with me. He was wearing three lanyards (some of the kids who come every year wear all their lanyards as a CTY pride thing) so I made some comment about how he must like this camp or he wouldn't keep coming back. He got sort of quiet, and then he said "CTY is the best part of my whole year, because I'm home schooled and I don't have any friends except for these three weeks." He then went into a whole big thing about he never wants to leave, and when he's too old for the program he's going to ask them if he can just volunteer in the office all summer. It was simultaneously the sweetest and most depressing conversation I've had with a student yet.

The most amusing part of my day was during activities period. We decided that instead of having regular activities today we'd have the RA groups rotate through each other and play icebreakers so the kids could meet people outside their halls. While we were playing two truths and a lie, this girl from another hall gave "I've been on birth control since I was twelve" as one of her truths. When all the other kids didn't believe her, she very seriously said "I have vaginal bleeding issues." It was incredibly weird, but also very hard not to burst out laughing.

I was feeling pretty bummed about my girls and their aloofness when I got back from activity period, and as if they knew I was missing them two of my girls from last session emailed me while I was out! They were both really sweet emails about missing me and the other girls, and one even asked for my address so she could write me letters. I miss them so much!

CIMRs: 1
Thought: Maybe if I taped a picture of Tom Cruise to my face my girls would actually pay attention to me...