Well, so much for “tomorrow” from my last post. And it’s pretty much a given that the next 2 people I’ll be talking about will each have their own entry. You can’t just shove three friendships of 4+ years into one post. Or at least, I can’t. Because I’m always tl;dr, you know.
Anyway, Samee was the next person I met, and another of David’s roommates. Now that I think about it, the start to us hanging out was also rather weird. Of course, I had first met him during those moving-in days before classes started, but he was rather studious, and didn’t hang out often with everyone during freshman year. I didn’t actually start getting to know him until a month or two into the fall semester.
I think how it started was that I had left my keys in my chair during one general chemistry lecture and didn’t realize it. And I didn’t realize I had lost my keys until after they had closed. Of course, I had roommates, so they could’ve let me into the apartment, but we all locked our bedroom doors when we left the apartment, so there was no getting into my room; somehow I felt more comfortable asking Samee if I could crash in his room rather than just sleeping on the couch in my own apartment.
I was never particularly close to my roommates. I mainly attribute it to a difference in interests. They were great roommates, and I’m glad that they were the people I got matched with — I just really liked video games and anime, and they didn’t really do any of that. Plus, I am innately intimidated by girls. I think someone once told me it was probably because there are so many more social rules with females compared to males. I’ll believe it.
So, that day that I lost my keys and that night I crashed in Samee’s room, I remember falling asleep while actively having a conversation with Samee. I mention this because usually talking with someone wakes me up, and it is the only time I can really remember ever having been the person to fall asleep during a late night conversation. I think after that, I began to sit in on the gen chem section that Samee was in, since his professor was so much better than mine. I *did* try to take good notes, but there were also a lot of derp comics of prinnies and the like.
It was actually from Samee that I learned the words “herp” and “derp”. He’s also one of those types of people who is intelligent, but generally acts goofy because it’s fun for him and he likes to troll people. (I could actually probably say that of all my friends, but him especially.) As a result of hanging out with him so much during undergrad, a little bit of those qualities have also rubbed off on me. Don’t get me wrong, I do still probably care too much about what others think of me, but I’m much more comfortable than I was before about just acting silly in public.
Samee also helped me become more open-minded in general. He introduced me to Linux, and for a little while, I tried it. I also liked it, but eventually I got too annoyed by the formatting differences when opening a Word document in Open Office. He also introduced me to a wide variety of games. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point during my relationship with David, I became a Nintendo fangirl. I find it weird because I had at least an equal amount of experience with a playstation as I did to Nintendo products prior to college. Maybe it had something to do with me only having ever owned Nintendo consoles.
In any case, due to him and my ADHD impulsiveness, in the spring semester of freshman year, I bought a PSP slim off of eBay, and it was one of the best and worst decisions ever. “Best” because I have played so many great games since getting it, and I still love it and have a queue of games that still need to be finished. “Worst” because oh my Lord of the Rings, did it totally distract me from focusing on classes.
I guess both Samee and Cameron also got me more into anime. Having only really watched Naruto up until that point, they were able to give me plenty of recommendations, which also distracted me from classes. Once I start an anime or manga, I usually marathon the series until I either finish it or catch up to the most recently released chapter/episode. (This also goes for TV shows.) I enjoyed most of the games and anime that they both recommended, and quite a few of them gave good food-for-thought. For example, Persona 3 Portable got me through a really tough time last fall, and I should probably dedicate a post to it at some point.
As much as Samee liked to help me dun, he also cared about my academics. We were both premed, and he was the one who told me about Molding Doctors. I can’t remember how much I’ve spoken about MD on here, but I was a member since sophomore year, treasurer during senior year, and vice president during my first year of grad school (last year). Needless to say, it was a large part of my undergraduate life, and since Samee was also a member and fellow officer during those years, a great deal of my memories of him are during MD events. (And then I will not go into any detail of any of those memorable events at all. Deal with it.)
I don’t think I said anything about how he actually cared for my academics in that paragraph. I can’t really remember much of it either, aside from him suggesting things to try that might help me study better. And of course, I’m still trying to figure that crap out. He actually suggested OneNote to me a few days ago for srs note-taking, so we’ll see how that goes.
However, I will say that he was pretty receptive during that time that I was having an identity crisis about whether or not I have ADHD. He was skeptical at first, but that rather quickly became general inquisitiveness. As motivated as I already was to learn more about ADHD and tips geared towards those with ADHD, his interest in learning about it motivated me even more. And it’s always, always, always encouraging when the people closest to you don’t judge you or dismiss you when you think you might have a disorder that many believe is fake or made up. It allows you to focus on the changes you want to make to work with yourself, rather than distracting you by tearing at your self-esteem. At least, that’s the way it is/was with me.
I guess the bottom line is that he has pretty much always given me his support in his own uniquely troll-ish way and continues to do so. I feel the quality of this post is lacking — it feels more aimless than usual, but I know that all of the posts in this series won’t do sufficient justice to the people I talk about. You guys have given me more and mean more to me than I will ever be able to adequately express in words. Just remember that as you read through this series.
In conclusion — as if this were some kind of analysis paper (an analysis of my life?) — this is the worst transition ever and this paragraph is completely irrelevant to the rest of this post. I took a break on HRPG for the past month or two because ~summer~, but fall classes started today for me, so look forward to seeing more regular posts from me again. Hopefully.
Baby steps.