It's interesting what you can find out about yourself when you're not expecting to find anything out. Today, we got these sheets to nominate people who we'd think do a good job as male and female captain and vice-captain of my school. All the people who have been accepted to leadership positions were on the sheet - although the (vice-)captains can only be Christians because my school is a Christian one, so that rules out some people on the list - and thus my name appeared there. Quite a bit of conversation today related to nominations, who would do well, who people are going to nominate, bla bla bla, and I noticed no-one was mentioning my name, which hardly came as a shock. Honestly, I'm not sure if I want to be a captain or not ... I do but I don't. Anyhow, back on topic. At the start of German, Aaron, Cryselda, and I were talking about nominations, and the subject of me being nominated came up. Turns out Cryselda's theory is that I won't get nominated because not enough people know me. I keep to myself and most people in the grade don't know a terrible lot about me. It may seem strange, but I never realised this. Everyone knows my name - quite honestly, it'd be hard for you not to, considering that I came from nowhere to take out grade eight Dux in 2000 and have consistently been winning awards and gained a reputation for my debating abilities - but beyond public stuff like that, people don't know me. They don't know what I'm like, what I like, what I think on stuff, et cetera. Some people have a bad image of me because I - used to - get into heated arguments with people and there were various outburst incidents, others have a good image of me because they think in those situations I'm the victim (both views are legitimate, actually), but beyond that, they've had very little interaction with me.
I'm not quite sure what to think of this. I'm quite possibly the most introverted, shy guy in the grade - achieving a massive score for introversion on a personality profile in SOR came as no surprise to anyone, particularly myself - and I rarely venture outside my group. I'll talk to people in some classes, and sometimes I'll spend a few minutes outside class talking to a few people at my locker during morning tea or whatever, but I hardly get out there and interact with other people in the grade. I did think people thought I was cold and distant, but now I've realised that it's more likely that they just don't know me at all. It's not that they have this opinion of me as a cold person, but that they DON'T have an opinion of me.
On the one hand, I'm actually quite happy. As long as people aren't judging me and I'm left to my own devices, I'm fine. And some people in the grade - most notably the majority of the guys and a minority of the girls - I'd rather not know. But on the other hand, I'm less than pleased. I would like people to actually know who I am instead of having no opinion or a potentially false opinion of me, and there are some people in the grade who seem like genuinely nice people who I'd love to get to know. So I don't know.
