This week I felt like my life was out of my control. I was dragging myself around, just barely living day-to-day, you know? Eat, sleep, work, class, and that's it. Just college existence, not real living. At first I thought my shitty mood might just be because Neil was going back to Boston and I won't get to see him again until mid-May ... which certainly doesn't make me feel any better, but that's not really a cause. Why can't I just for once go for more than a year with the same group of friends?! In high school, I really only hung out with Neil and his family, which was kinda lame, but I really didn't have the time or resources or even the desire to put towards anyone else. And at St. Olaf, I had the best of friends; a group of truly amazing people who cared about me, and I cared about them. I'm not saying it was a perfect year, because it wasn't. I wasn't happy at St. Olaf. I had my way of dealing with things (primarily the fact that I was the sober friend in a group of people who drank), which usually ended up being to get the hell off campus on weekends - especially in the spring. But here, at MSU, I don't want to be that girl again. The one who goes home on weekends. It doesn't really matter though; now I'm just the girl who sits in her room and watches movies by herself. What an improvement. I wish I could have the friendships I had last year. People who didn't judge me for what I did or didn't do. People who drank but respected the fact that I didn't. People who threw the word "fuck" around as the adjective of choice. People who would kid me about my Minnesotan accent even though I went to college in my home state, knew I was a damn good cellist and thought it was okay that I listened to country music. They accepted me as I was, and though they gave me shit about it every chance they got, deep down they wanted me to stay exactly the same. I'm so sick of super-Christians. At the beginning of the school year I thought I wanted what they had, but now with every day that passes I only want to get as far from that lifestyle as I can. Unlike the St. Olaf music majors, they accepted me with conditions. A fact I didn't realize until the conditions were met. I was accepted, until I did something wrong, or cussed, or proved myself to be "unChristian." I was so blind! How could I have wanted to be like them? I felt like I could be better when I was with them, but now I just think, I liked who I used to be, and other people did too! Why should I change? I was made to be who I am, not who I could be! I was always hiding when I was with them. Sometimes I would say something that high-school-Rachel would say, or even St.-Olaf-Rachel, and the MSU kids would give me strange looks. And I would apologize! I would always say, "Oops, sorry, that was my St. Olaf side coming out!" But there never was a St. Olaf side; that was the real thing, something I can never show them because it's not the MSU-Rachel that they met at the beginning of the year. I know who I was at St. Olaf was real, and the girl I was in high school is real. Maybe that's why I had real friendships. Elizabeth Clark gave me the greatest compliment I've ever gotten last year; she told me I was the most real person she's ever known. I want that girl back. Not the one who spent half of this school year "trying to be somebody." Because the truth is, when you're trying to be somebody, you don't have anything left over to be yourself.