Walking around the school campus.

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Hello folks. It's been awhile since I have posted around here. Some phases and feelings around but I am still here.


For some reason I started thinking when I was in school. I had the habit of walking around the perimeter of limitation areas (where the students can be). I always felt better when I wasn't in one spot all the time and knew it would be good if I can at least see people doing there things. I felt maybe it was good and for me, better than being in one spot all the time. I didn't do this all the time since there were periods of time that I did stay in a certain area. Usually the quieter areas. But I liked to move. Hyperactive energy was in my blood.

This allowed me to imagine a picture of me being involved around the school and becoming part of something, but of course I didn't fit into everything there and I didn't feel a problem with all of it. Though I did feel I want to be at least involved and not try too hard to be part of something, I felt a source of frustration that I didn't though I knew that I had the tendency to walk away and be on my own. It was part of my comfortness sobeit. That I can get into later.

The story is I sometimes felt if people knew I kept walking around campus and wondered if they cared or were bothered by it. My guess was no, but then assume that some realized my habit. Besides I didn't really stare at any group of people nor gave funny and disturbing looks at people. That's the good thing but I still think if it could be an annoyance when I know it shouldn't. Maybe the concern of knowing too much about things. I don't know.

2 things about walking around the campus

Knowing a few people here and there. Witnessing more about the common socializing and whether I would accept it or not.

Exercise, at least I got to walk for a while while on campus and with a loaded backpack on me it probably helped me...
...Or maybe the cause a a mild case of scoliosis. I didn't have a locker on time to put stuff in since they were limited.


Question is...

Did anyone else ever walk around the school grounds a lot during free time. Something like a way to numb the AS social discomfort?

In high school, walking about the school grounds didn't even enter my mind. The odds of running into one of the bullies was too high. I had my pre-planned "safe" routes (which sometimes involved going through multiple floors), and never strayed from them come hell or high water. Now my high school was pretty large, so it was easy enough to hide in a crowd when the situation required it. However, its layout practically was extremely conducive to bullying. There was one extra-wide "main" hallway in the middle of the building, two "thru-traffic" hallways that ran the entire length of the building, and short hallways branching from them, for "local traffic". Given the large number of bullies I had, it was guaranteed that I would run into one of them in either "thru-traffic" hallway. However, making a quick dash into a "local traffic" hallway helped avoid a bully on a few occasions. Here's a crude ASCII rendition of my high school; it shows only a subset of the building. As you can see, this layout just begs aspies to be bullied.

In college, I walked around the campus during free time during the first few months. I found it to be a good excercise. The college campus was large enough to avoid anyone I didn't want to see. Fortunately, there were no bullies whatsoever. However, a gut feeling told me that I looked pretty stupid idly walking around campus. So I took to reading a book in the library or something. Sometimes I smoked, which made things even easier: I had an option of standing in front of a building, and making small talk with other smokers. When done with the cigarette, I would simply go back to the library or a common area, and sit there reading a book.


Speaking of my floorplan, maybe in the future (say, 10 or 20 years from now) architects who design school buildings will start taking bullying into consideration, and design buildings in a way that helps bullying victims avoid bullies. In the long run, it'll be a healthier school environment for aspies. This goes along with my post about a solutionto the bullying problem. See it here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.html?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3976.

I walk around my high school campus a lot. It's because I have a sort of chronic physical restlessness, and I can think better when I'm walking anyway.

Bullies: Well I had a few incidents in JrHS but not HS. I was usually picked on, and kids would try to rile me up and make me irate. Knowing I wasn't very social and usually alone made me somewhat of a target for a few kids. The quad areas were wide and we weren't allowed to where the classrooms are located so I was in open air territory.

The HS was smaller than most other public schools in the city and the wings were very parallel with one hall to the side and another hall on the other side that split the wings.

But bullying was not a problem for me in HS. Overall HS kids were more mellow than JHS ones. Just from my experience.

I wouldn't exactly call people at my high school mellow; they were more like vicious. A lot of them seemed to be more like apes in the jungle, rather than people in school. It was "survival of the fittest" at its worst. Although junior high school was by no means pleasant, it was relatively mellow compared to the rough, cold high school.