Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

High school is hard. The question is, is it any harder at boarding school than at regular high schools. Does the fact that you're paying for the privlige to be miserable make it worse? And do you have to surrender your right to be critical, just because you're lucky enough to pay for that opportunity? This book reminded me just how exhausting both self-doubt and high school can be.

I read this book because B. recommended it... She liked the senior year the best, I liked the previous years better. I was hoping she'd become less self-conscious as she got older, but no, just absorbed in different types of paranoia - a relationship with a boy.

It also bothers me when people don't own up to their ability to change things in their lives. That some people would rather bitch about a crappy situation than do what's necessary to, if not fix it, then at least make it less crappy. There's only so much "oh poor me" I can take without action, from real life or fictional characters.

"As I watched her hunched back grow smaller and smaller, I felt as happy for myself as I did for her. I had taught Conchita to ride a bike - it was incredible. And this was a feeling, perhaps the only one from our brief friendship, that never went sour."

"And there was something else, another reason I didn't want to go to the activities center with Nick. I believed that if you had a good encounter with a person, it was best not to see them again for as long as possible lest you taint the previous interaction. Say it was Wednesday and there was an after-dinner lecture and you and your roommate struck up some unexpectedly fun conversation with the boys sitting next to you. Say the lectur turned out to be boring and so throughout it you wispered and made faces at one another, and then it ended and you all left the schoolhouse. And then forty minutes later, you, alone now, without the buffer of a roommate, were by the card catalog in the library and passed one of these boys, also without his friend - then what were you to do? To acknowledge each other by nodding would be, probably, unfriendly, it woudl be confirmation of the anomaly of your having shared something during the lecture, and already you'd be receding into your usual roles. But it would probably be worse to stop and talk. You'd be compelled to try prolonging the earlier jollity, yet now there would be no lecturer to make fun of, it would just be the two of you, overly smiley, both wanting to provide the quip on which the conversation could sastisfactorily conclude. And then what if, in the stacks, you ran into each other again? It would be awful!

This anxiety meant that I spent a lot of time hiding, usually in my room, after any pleasant exchange with another person."