Be warned, I'm about to get quite b****-y

Before I arrived in Kingston to start my first year at Queen's, I had thought that all the kids I'd encounter (or most anyway) in Queen's would be snobs and all stuck up - you know what they say, Queen's is a party school for rich kids. I braced myself for a year of dealing with all these kids that would be partying it up constantly and was prepared to be friendless for a big part of the year. Nearing the end of the summer last year, I also began to wonder if I'd actually fit in at Queen's or if I should have just gone to McMaster along with everyone else, or go to Waterloo, where I'd have less of a hard time fitting into a school where everyone is all introverted anyway.

I've already made my point before, I'm sure, of how great everyone is at Queen's. Sure, there are the really stuck up jerks and jerkettes that got to me. But I found that most of them are AWFULLY nice and hardworking, excluding some of the jerks I've had to work with. But all in all, I wouldn't trade my first year experience with anyone else's. I found great people who had the same interests and values as myself, and I thought to myself, this wouldn't be much different from high school when I had those great friends. In fact, if anything, I think that my university life was better; I got to be around these people all the time. The ones that lived on my floor were amazing, and being around them 24/7 let us get to know them faster and better.

It was when I came back home that things seemed off. I'd been so priveledged to be around the people on my floor, around people I was so comfortable with, the past year that I'd forgotten what it felt like to always have to pretend. It's back home with the old friends that I found that the snobs were NOT in Kingston, but in Markham. I looked back at my time at PETHS and I picked out all the rich snobs, and believe me, there's a lot of them, even if they don't think they are. Even some of the people I usually hang out with seemed different to me. The friends I have at Queen's understand what it means to conserve, and not spending money all the time, but sometimes it seems, people here have money to spare. The people in Markham happen to be a lot more fortunate than I would be happy with. Maybe I was younger then (and maybe it's high school that makes everyone into pricks), but in Scarborough, people didn't seem as worried about who's driving a Porsche, or a BMW, or the Benz. No, they had Hondas, and Toyotas and cars that teenagers should have, not cars that adults have been working to pay for ten years from now. Not everyone had the newest game console, or the newest generation of iPod.

I guess it just bothers me that everyone, upon coming back from university, has changed so much. Everyone drinks, and knows everything about alcohol. A lot of them act as though they're a whole lot better now that they're in university. They seem different from the previous year when we'd just sit around. A lot of the time now, I'm just not as comfortable around them any more.

Maybe it's just because I've been away from all the high school people for many months that it seems that way.

Because that's definitely the way it is at home too. More often than not, I find that one of my sisters is constantly getting pissed off at the SLIGHTEST things I do. It's like she's on CONSTANT PMS MODE, and I just never really know what to say to her in case I get on her nerves. She's not even freakin' pregnant, and I do NOT want to ever see that. This same sister is also the one that I think is EXTREMELY FAKE. From her sugary voice she only uses around adults, to the way she acts around different people, it bothers me and I can't keep up. She is always sucking up to the parents and is always getting the best favor. They only see all the good things she does and not the ones I do because hers are always IN YOU FACE, while mine are subtle and I don't make a show of it. But I suppose I SHOULD be doing it her way because the parents are always shooting ME the disapproving looks.

She is also sometimes, a little too selfish and hypocritical. With the one mentioned above, the slightest mention about something personal about her throws her off, but she thinks that it's appropriate to blackmail me into telling her stuff that really isn't any of her business. She thinks that she can just sit at my desk and start using my computer when I'm not in the room, and when I'm even two steps away from hers, she lashed out at me. It seems that a lot of rules that seem to apply to me don't apply to her. Whenever the parents tell us off, she always uses the excuse that I don't respect her, but frankly, respect is earned, and when you're always doing stuff to make me lose my respect for you, it does help. She says I like my other sister more. Go figure. She grew OUT of her puberty and stopped yelling at me all the time. She actually talks to me. Instead, almost every word out of your mouth is a joke at my expense or a mockery or something else stupid. She thinks that she and my other sister are "estranged", she calls it. But it is only so because you let it be so. Since I've come back, I've seen that at least she tries to talk to you. But you just ignore it and talk about her in third person to the parents. PS. stop giving me curfews and other rules in the house that you don't even follow yourself.

For a while, I've thought that all these thoughts I've been having were due to PMS or something, because I can get thinking around those times. But I've realised, being at school AWAY from my family has led to less break downs and less pissy times. When I came back, all those things started up again. I don't hate my family, I really don't. But sometimes, they're just REALLY hard to get along with.