Please don't tap on the glass.

You know those smelly pet stores in the malls? Full of cute little creatures in little glass cages. And people come in, press their noses against the glass, and say things like, "ooooh, look at the little white one!"

Sometimes my life at Providence reminds me of these pet stores. No only because my dorm smells like wet dog, but because people stand on the outside of my life, look in, and then talk about what they see. Usually, it doesn't bother me so much. I knew that I would face this when I chose to attend the smallest college on my list of potentials. However, this week, I found the fact that my life is under the microscope to be completely maddening. People, who I barely know, come up and ask me about my love life. People, who I have just one class with, ask me how my big paper is going. People sit around crowded tables in the student centre and discuss whose dating whom, who broke up with whom, and how this effects the oh so delicate social structure here at Prov.

I want to know people and to have them know me. I want to get people, and I want to be "got". But it's so easy here to be in people's lives, talk about about people's friends, to know who they love, and then, never really know them. It seems to me that there is a huge difference between knowing about somebody, and really knowing them. But in my life that resembles a fish tank, I'm not sure how to get others to know me...or how I can actually know them.