SCICON memories

i recently was singing the song “pizza man” to maeven and tyren and it made me get out the SCICON video (the video which brought adam and i together…we met because he came to SCICON while i was working there, to make this video) to show them their mommy on stage at campfire, singing that song with my friends for a group of like 200 kids. so fun to watch!!

unfortunately my memories of scicon are extremely tainted by my memories of the DEEP pain (i still feel it to this day) of being NOT part of the group. that year the interns were so tightly cliqued and i felt seriously rejected because of not being included in that clique. and i felt it deeply regularly. i thoroughly enjoyed my teaching time and nature and all that but when i remember back to that time i just can’t help but feel a tightness in my heart over all the social pain i also experienced there. there was no malice by the other interns…it was just kinda like high school…they just didn’t consider some of us as part of their inner circle and as such we got left out a lot. me, tamara and beckie z felt this a lot i’m sure because they all got treated the same way i did. but unfortunately amongst the 3 of us, we just couldn’t really click ourselves…which is sad, but the reality of that time. we were all 3 very different.

i feel very angry sometimes when i think of how i felt during that year there. because it was so juvenile. it could have been such a wonderful time in all ways if the others had just been a little more mature and included the rest of us in their fun.

i can remember night after night after night of going down to the intern house lounge and hanging out and waiting for someone to include me in the conversation. there were times i would time it. i would pay attention to if anyone even said hi when i walked in (they rarely, if ever, did), and then see how long it took for someone to include me in their silly conversations and fun games (they rarely did). there were nights i would not be noticed at all. it was like i wasn’t even there! that hurt SOOOO friggin bad. there were times i would hang out there for over an hour and not one person would even look at me, much less include me in their conversations.

i remember one time in particular that hurt like HELL and really brought it all to a head that i wasn’t even considered when they were doing stuff. the whole gang piled into a car and were heading up to the scicon gate to do a “naked run”…(it was a drunken nite)…and i didn’t want to do any naked running but i thought i’d go along to watch everyone else be dumb. when i got to the car, there was no room and they just looked at me like, “what are you thinking? we have no room for you, go away!” no one attempted to move over or make room or even say “sorry”. they just drove off and ignored me. that night i could have killed myself because i was so dejected that i went for a walk on a trail that was pretty treacherous…and i did it when it was pouring down rain and i was pretty dang drunk. i walked all the way out to the rainbow bridge to sit under a tree and cry and feel sorry for myself. i could have slipped and died easily. luckily i didn’t. no one even noticed i was gone. no one cared. when i got back i went and checked in with ron and he was mad that i had taken that chance, but he was in bed asleep and hadn’t noticed i was gone either. 🙁 (ron was my best friend at SCICON)

you know what, it makes me want to talk to the current interns and just give them a heads up about what a wonderful opportunity they have to be able to connect with ALL the interns they are working with. even if they don’t hit it off with them all…that they could at least attempt to get to know them. i just really feel scarred from that aspect of my time at SCICON. 🙁

but i digress…i need to stop dwelling on the negative memories. i just have wanted to blog about that for awhile and now i have. watching that video yesterday reminded me of it all. i wonder if rick (the director of SCICON) would allow me to include a letter from a past intern to give to new interns and maybe even meet with them during their orientation and training and just give them a heads up to at least TRY to connect with all of them. i don’t know if my year was unique in this or if i’m just a big baby or what. but i hadn’t been rejected like that ever before that i can think of…was really used to be right in the middle of the gangs of friends…so it came as a huge shock and huge pain to me. i tend to think that if someone had just pointed out to the others how their actions were making me feel, that they might have changed their behavior because i think they were honestly just oblivious. so maybe i could just plant the seed into the minds of the new interns. i dunno, maybe.

anyway…back to the current times and the reality of now. 🙂 got family time to do!

postscript: i just reread this and i sound pretty pathetic. well i was pretty pathetic at the time…and that’s how i remember it. i know i could have just shrugged it off but the thing is that i had really looked at this opportunity as another chance to have the great experience of community and group fun that i had when i lived in teh dorms in college. what i got was so completely opposite. like i said, the work experience was GREAT! and i was the happiest i ever was in regards to that. i still think so fondly of the permanent staff and the naturalists especially and how wonderful they were and how great to get a chance to get to know people like briz and paul and bill the birdman and marcia marcia marcia…GREAT people! and i did have fun with the other interns at times…but the deep hurt i felt from being so completely ignored during social time cut so deep that to this day i remember it vividly. bleh, get over it tina. its not the end of the world but i sure would love to be able to just plant a seed into the minds of those that have experiences where they can choose to include or exclude people and help them think about always including because even as adults we can experience this sort of hurt. we were all in our 20s for pete’s sake! you’d think we were mature enough to know this. guess not. still happens to me these days even sometimes…but i’m ok, i have my family and i am no longer alone when i go home and so there’s not time or place to dwell on this sort of thing these days! 🙂