I got a contract job at IBM. I’ll be on a team of editors working on their developerWorks site. I’m excited about it, I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot. I start next week.

In other news, my 15th high school reunion is coming up. I haven’t been in touch with anyone from my high school at all, pretty much since graduation. That’s mostly because I expect that a lot of these people probably still think of me as a doughy, spoiled, somewhat judgmental prude. And sure, I’ve probably just been mostly paranoid about it anyway, but it hasn’t been worth it to me to find out. To the extent that this opinion of me was based on anything real, I would feel embarrassed to be around these people, and to the extent that it wasn’t, I would feel indignant. Either way, it’s meant no class reunions for me, at least up to now. But when I look at myself and how much I’ve changed since high school, and realize that everyone I knew back then could very well have changed as much, that does make me kind of curious. I can’t go anyway because the timing is bad with the new job, but I do have the chance to get in touch with some old classmates, so I am. If I don’t even give them a chance, I’m the one who’s being unfair.

7 thoughts on “

  1. Congratulations on the new job! That sounds very exciting!

    If I don’t even give them a chance, I’m the one who’s being unfair.
    It sounds like you’ve changed a lot since high school then. You definitely don’t seem like the kind of person to be doughy, spoiled or a judmental prude.

    • Thanks! My favorite part of tech writing was that it keeps you learning new things, and this will expose me to even more.

      And thank you for the vote of confidence. I think it’s an unfair exaggeration of my teenage self, but I also think there’s a grain of truth in it. But I was very self-conscious, like most teenagers, and so I believed that people saw me that way, even when they gave me no real reason to. I guess I still have some residual insecurities there, and I still judge my old self kind of harshly. With most of my class, I actually had a kind of benign acquaintance, I guess.

  2. Ah, reunions. My mom actually didn’t start going to hers until her 30th, harboring many of the same fears you’ve expressed. She was quite pleasantly surprised at how much her classmates had changed and mellowed out over the years, and even made friends with some whom she would have never been on friendly terms with in high school. The adjectives you tossed out are in no way those I would have chosen to describe you – and if they did then, I think your classmates will be VERY surprised, because you’re so damn cool now. Go, have fun, and banish your evil high school demons!

  3. Hooray for the new job!

    My 10th college reunion is this summer, but even though I’m still a (grad) student at the same school I went to for undergrad and thus live about four blocks away from the main reunion site, I don’t think I’ll go…I think if I didn’t have to pay for the festivities I’d be more inclined to. 😛

  4. good luck with IBM =)

    Okay, so I’m not good with this whole LJ thing, but I wanted to say that you’re going to enjoy IBM. My husband works for McAfee and he and his software buddies praise IBM for the fact that their company has done so well despite so much upheaval in the late 90’s (esp. with the dot com bubble blowing up so bad).

    I wish you and your family good tidings =)

    ~Sas~

  5. High School Re Onions

    I went to my 10th, and some people had really changed, some not. At mine, if you were a nerd, then you had improved, and the cool people had degenerated – fat, divorced, unhappy, unemployed. It was nice in a Revenge of the Nerds kinda way.

    I got remembered by people I didn’t recognize, and had to bluff it, and recognized people who clearly had no idea who I was – “Hey, Xavier! Yeah, you don’t remember me! Me and Elizabeth sat right behind you in AP bio! The whole year. We did experiments together. Never mind.”
    Xavier could have at least tried to bluff me. :)