Don't feel like I belong with classmates

[dannyboy65]

Well I am in a resident care working course. It's where I look after people in hospitals, group homes, senior homes, and peoples houses who can't look after themselves completely. I love the course, and I love helping people. I used to be extremely introverted, but over the past year or so I've been becoming a good mix of extrovert and introvert.

I just find it so hard to fit in though with my classmates. I want them to like me and talk to me or include me in their conversations. But the thing is they talk about their families or kids or relationships. Where as I don't really have a close relationship with my family or have kids. I have a girlfriend but I don't talk about us to my classmates to be professional. I will mention some things about her but I won't go into details about her or anything.

I think though that people find me weird. There are 19 girls in my class and me and 3 other guys. I find I'm becoming to be a big loner again and I don't want to go back down that path. So I push myself out of my comfort zone a lot and try to talk about their interests.

On the bright side though I think I am making progress. I notice now some of my classmates will sit with me in the cafeteria if I am around and talk to me which is nice. I also noticed I get along much better with one of my older classmates who is in her 50's. So I am doing something right I think. Hopefully by the end of the year they would like to talk to me more.

Even today though my teacher was talking to me after class because I was the last one leaving. She knows of my autism and mental illness cause I told her just in case I start to struggle. She told me that she noticed that the class has been very good and understanding to me, which I noticed when she said that. I just think maybe it's my paranoid schizophrenia causing me to think this. I guess I will keep you guys updated how this social life at school goes but so far I have been making progress, but I want to make just a little more for my own personal goal.

 

[Megaten]

Im too different to ever really relate to my classmates. Im the only male and like a decade older than everyone. So Im almost always out of the loop in any class conversation, not that Id understand what they are talking about anyways. This was an issue at my last university, though Im starting to doubt that it would be any different had I done college earlier in life.

 

[FriendlyShadow]

I feel the same way actually. Usually, a lot of people around my age just don't seem to click well with me. I guess I shouldn't expect people like/have exactly the same kind of tastes or lifestyle as me, but there does need to be common ground. There's just a lot of things I share little in common with anybody such as music, personality traits(usually extroverts), sports (I'm not a sports fan though), movies, ect. I noticed the kids around me would prefer to listen to what's been thrown at them, mostly it's hip hop, metal, rap, ect. I'm more into alternative rock/psychedelic In all honesty, I doubt that I'd be able to manage to keep a relationship with someone I can't talk my interests with. Nowadays, I guess it is difficult to find anybody who can share your interests/tastes with, and the only way to achieve that is if you're extremely lucky. I guess that's all it takes to make it through this world. You just have to be born lucky or you'll always end up losing.