[Day 269] Pictures

Since about sixth grade, the last day of school has been special for more than just a symbol for my public education coming to an end just another year faster. It was also special because I was justified in bringing my camera to school to take pictures of all my friends.

This year’s last day of school (since tomorrow is just morning class parties and then senior check out) was different from previous ones, however. I took two pictures and three short videos, and that was it. And after watching gratuitous amounts of Ze Frank (I don’t care that it’s from 2006. I love him.) and sxephil YouTube videos, I think I’ve discovered the reason for this year’s drop in picture taking.

I have more friends.

But Bri, you might exclaim, doesn’t that mean you should be taking MORE pictures?

No, silly fictitious voice in my head that keeps me company during AP tests. It means I take less. Duh. That’s what the whole blog is about.

However, I feel like, as the reader of my blog, you deserve more than a “duh” for an explanation. See, when you don’t have many friends, and instead have a lot of peripheral acquaintances, you spend your time taking lots of pictures, pretending that they’re your friends. None of you really have anything to say to one another because let’s be honest, you’re all just hanging out for convenience and lack of a stable social group, so posing for funny pictures fills the conversation-less void.

There are distinct trends in my life regarding my number of friends and acquaintances, that can be summed up by this poorly drawn graph:

So what does this graph say about me and my friendship patterns? Well, as you can see, before middle school, my number of acquaintances stayed just slightly above a relatively low number of friends, when they suddenly exploded because my friendship numbers dropped to all time lows. But as I got into high school, although at first I still had more acquaintances than friends, my numbers started equalizing until I actually achieved the very tricky ability of having more friends than acquaintances for the first time in my life.

What does this mean? Did I get popular? Did I stop making small talk? No. I just started building more meaningful relationships and finally let myself talk honestly regarding myself and how I felt.

And there you go. One late blog with some admirable substance. I’ll try to make a high school wrap up video tomorrow after check out with some actual footage from school. Finally having people to talk to is NO EXCUSE to slack on my blog.