GUEST COLUMN: The self-consciousness of image

Amanda Karsten, Guest Columnist Amanda Karsten, Guest Columnist As soon as I got to Penn, I found myself unable to write. I, who had filled bookshelves full of journals in high school, became intimate with that jeering reminder of writer's block, the Blank Page. Looking back, I associate my writing in high school with a certain innocence, a certain youth. My friends from home seem more guarded now and less accessible. I know, people grow apart. But the distance I sense has less to do with what we have in common and more to do with the nature of our interaction. It's as if we're less willing to expose ourselves and more concerned with polish. Image. So that now, when I go home, I feel the same chill I feel here at Penn. Everyone tightly wrapped up in image. A parade of images from the High Rises to Bennett Hall. Self-conscious conversations, where I feel like I'm watching myself interact with people, rather than just connecting with them. I feel like there's this looming block between pretense and meaning and I can't bridge the gap. I can't find the words. Is this discomfort I feel just a case of me struggling with a Peter Pan complex? Or do others of you feel a chill these days you didn't feel before, a wider distance between our private selves (the voices our journals know) and the images we show the world? Images don't seem to lend themselves to meaningful conversations or laughter that touches your core. Maybe I'm just realizing the beauty of innocence. Or maybe I'm realizing the effort it can take to produce meaning. I feel ridiculous, to a certain extent, waxing nostalgic for the good old days of high school. How lame to romanticize the time of my life plagued by braces, the boredom of suburbia and waking up at 6 a.m. God knows, by the time I was a senior, I felt like an animal trapped in a cage and counted the seconds to graduation along with the rest of my class. It's just that never once, during my entire high school career, did I hear someone use the phrase "social climbing." Countless weekend nights were spent watching movies and just hanging out -- no one started stressing Tuesday night about what to do the upcoming weekend and no one needed fake IDs and $20 in cab fare to have a good time. I'm always amazed by how boring weekends at Penn are. Didn't most of us choose a city school in response to the limited entertainment resources of our suburban origins? Little did we know the extreme boredom that comes from shallow conversations in the cab ride to some new club and the emptiness that comes from friendships centered around picking up guys. And as I babble on in small talk with so many people here, trying to avoid an obvious silence that screams, "WE HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON," I find myself longing for a real conversation, a real connection. Give me some souvenir of sincerity, some spark of originality and creativity and I'll choose suburbia over the hip, urban scene any day. I'd rather have my voice again -- ringing, strong -- than learn how to pretend with ease.