Ageism

While I was at UCLA, the vast majority of students around me were within a plus or minus range of 4 years from my age. Every once in a blue moon, there would be an outlier, but overall the age concentration was very dense. Even though I knew in my head that law school would have a much larger range and I would be on the tail end of the younger side of the spectrum, I tend to forget.

The other day at dinner all my friends mentioned something about being 25 and called me a baby when they realized that I was but a mere 22 years old (but going on 23!). I personally don't feel like 25 is that much older than me but anything above it is because it's on the cusp of the plus or minus four year age bracket I'm used to.

See, I have this theory that you don't really feel a height difference for people plus or minus 5 inches from your height because your eye levels tend to be pretty even. But if someone is more than 5 inches shorter than you, they feel short; and if someone is more than 5 inches taller than you, they suddenly feel tall. For example, being 5'7, I don't really feel much shorter than my friends who are 6' tall. But as soon as they go up to 6'1 or above, I feel short. I don't know if there's a psychological phenomenon for this, but I swear there must be something about how far someone is out of your range for you to actually recognize it.

I digress. My point was that now I'm realizing that there are all these people who are like 27, 30, 33 years old that I never realized were that old because I assumed everyone at school was my age or at most 25. But there older people, people who are married, have kids, have real apartments with real furniture. Just further along in life. As much of an old soul as I am, I've been feeling pretty young lately. I guess that's not such a bad thing.