Uni is always noted as being a unique community: You get to be with relatively the same 60 people for five years. And to some extent this is good (you get to know each other better and are able to form “lasting bonds” with your classmates), but being around the same people for those five straight years also can result in a lot of tension.

It's unfortunate that these tensions keep arising from how people established themselves early in their Uni careers. If when you were a subbie everyone knew you as the class gossiper, for the next four years following that, it would take a lot of effort to be able to prove to your classmates that you've changed (and even then I'm sure people would be a little hesitant).

In essence, the groups you associated with and the person you defined yourself to be within the first couple of years here stick with you until the end of high school.

I'm sure people change. You realize that the stupid things you did your subbie and freshman years were just plain childish or uncalled for. People mature. I don’t see anyone playing the beloved Zap! game anymore, and girls have begun to discover that wearing inch-long skirts isn’t the only way to get people to notice you.

Unfortunately, no matter how different you are from your subbie/freshman years, everyone is still going to see you as that short, immature, self-indulgent person you once were.

It’s one of those things, at the time, you think you’re being amazingly cool: “Oh I flirt with all the boys, and I take the best pictures ever … who wouldn’t want to be me?”

But then after a year or two you look back and you can’t believe how stupid you must have appeared. No matter how much you want to, you can’t travel back in time.

Looking back at my own class there was once a “clique” known as Jehannie, people who loved to wear dragon/lizard shirts, and many other things that I’m sure, looking back, people can’t believe they ever even did. You can say you’ve changed, but, trust me, no one is going to forget your boy-crazy preteen days.

You think you would take that feeling of “I can’t believe I ever did that” and apply it to the present. Now being cool is defined by how much you can brag about smoking, drinking, and hooking up without getting caught by your parents or the school. “Oh man, there was this crazy party last weekend. I got really drunk and puked all over the bathroom. I can’t remember any of it. It was amazing.”

When you’ve graduated do you really want to be the person remembered as the “pothead” or the “light weight”? When you come back for a class reunion, successful and owning your own business, do you really want to hear, in front of your family and friends, “How many people did you used to say you hooked up with? Everyone in the entire class? Wow, you were so cool.”

I would say, do as you wish, but just remember that the way you portray yourself now is how you’re going to be remembered for years to come. It’s taken you forever to get over those poncho-wearing days; do you really want to have to go through that sort of thing again?