Punk, Indie, Stoners, Blah Blah Blah . . .

I don't like to think that I belong to a particular sub-culture . . . I pretty much dress, act, speak, and do the things I do because I want to do them. People who don't know me too well may put me in a sub-culture, but the things I do seem different to me than what everyone else is doing. A lot of what I do is based on the past anyway; I'm a vintage freak and I don't try to follow current trends. As I'm sure a lot of you know already by what I've written, past eras are a big influence on my life and I try to follow the trends of the past because that's what I know or love; even if it is quirky or acceptable today.

So, getting past that, I began to think of my group of friends and how different we all are. It's odd because you see many groups of friends on campus, hanging out before their classes start, and they all dress the same and are doing the same things. If you look at my closest group of friends, you would see that there is a definite difference between all of us. I'm the music business student, Crystal is the theater student, Brett and Lindsey are film students (different though. One is working on drama and action mainstream films, the other indie documentaries and music videos), Libby is the fine art college drop out, and so on.

Sure, if you placed us in our separate groups at school, we fall into the cliques and stereotypes of each major: music business students all smoke, theater students are very hyper and eccentric, film students are a bit pretentious . . . but when my group of friends are together, those stereotypes seem to go away and we just act ourselves. And yet, we all get along wonderfully and have for the past two years.

I guess I'm saying that my group of friends is a sub-culture in itself. We don't have a particular group name, nor do we all dress the same and act the same. Yes, we have our inside jokes that many people are confused about and I've been told that we intimidate people that we meet (for what reason, I'm not sure. We're pretty nice people and are open to making new friends). We all have different personalities and senses of humor and morals, but for some reason, we just click. I wouldn't want it any other way, though. I love the variety of tastes my friends have; it keeps my life interesting.

-Jade N. Amey