At the start of the school year, I was a hit. I entered action with boldness and became very popular for what felt like 3 weeks. I had social success and sexual success outside of classroom meet ups with female classmates friends. I rode this wave assuming I had finally achieved what I set out to do at a new school (and failed to do in high school, work, and other social areas). I had the false assumption that I'd be looked up to for the remainder of the program due to an anchoring effect of first impressions. I was literally buzzing, I'd overhear conversations with me as subject matter and information would come back to me emphasizing that I was highly regarded...

But I failed to make any meaningful connections or share vulnerabilities with specific people within my year over time. I stopped spending breaks or lunches with them (felt it was a waste of time to be honest and campus food is garbage) and slowly reverted to my more introverted habits as people drifted away and others filled my role in class, almost instinctively. I now realize maintaining such an initial image is exhausting and ultimately not fruitful in this setting.

I am still respected in class, but I am lonely. Obviously at this age it has gotten rather cliquey by this point of the year (class is also slightly female majority). I look around at the cliques and I can honestly say without bias that I don't want to be a part of any of them. I say hello to the people I respect daily, as there are a select few I've targetted as having similar worldviews as myself, whom I chat with outside of school infrequently. I small talk those that I barely know when they are in my environment. I try sitting in new areas within classrooms but usually just sit near the front to receive my education and encourage a positive reputation among my professors (for I feel that's what really matters when I am to look back on this experience).

I can't help but feel like I've failed socially. Once again. This feeling is very familiar. It happens every time, except this time I had a great start.

Maybe I'm paranoid and I'm just not reaching out enough, but I don't really care to. I've been spending the last 2 weeks purposefully associating with the people that seem introverted but are also doing good work and appear highly motivated. Contrasting my initial strategy to associate with the alpha-dominate Type A peers, whom I still speak with one-on-one as they share common interests/self-improvement.

For now my strategy is to keep my head down and bare the fruits of external networking and good grades and accumulation of useful knowledge. But I feel the pull to sit down and deconstruct my social faux pas and isolate targets to rehabilitate my own clique (or submit to another one). Perhaps it's my instinct to be a leader since birth and refusal to be led that is pushing people away and limiting my social succuess (I retain leadership in smaller groups of friendlier associates) but also allowing me to achieve sexual success. I either consciously or unconsciously refuse to associate in a group where I am not a leader, I'd rather be alone (is that what we call an omega?).

[One time I was about to sit near a peer and some beta whispered, "the fronnntttt" as if to not want me to sit there, but I think this one, in particular, is butthurt over a female conquest of mine. However, I think this recent incident is what sparked this post]. A quote that helps me arrive to class and disrupt typical seating behavior, as I feel there is some sort of covert contract of where I should be sitting with who as I receive good responses in a one-on-one environment:

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." - Marcus Aurelius

Advice needed, friends. I go to class excited for my area of learning but feel anxiety over the social dynamics (I do not show it I send clear signals that I am unbothered and think it would be narcissistic of me to think anyone really notices what I'm doing, but I'm sure the females do for social hierarchies recognition is in their nature). Let me reiterate that I'm not hated, but I failed to make any meaningful connections outside of peer/rigid 'office place' social dynamic.