I'm one of them people who used to think that being outgoing was equivalent to acting stupid. I always felt that those who were outgoing were people of lesser intelligence and were probably gonna end up jobless, pregnant, in jail, or just poor, after highschool. Because of this I refused to "lower" myself to the level of being an outgoing person. This is not really my fault though, because most of the family on my dad's side believe that outgoing=stupid and that you should concentrate all of your life's efforts on improving your intelligence. There's a lot of engineers in my family (yes, this is relevant). Well once I hit college I met tons of people who are actually smarter than me and who were outgoing, so I was shown the light in a sense.
Well anyway, I've pretty much shucked off the beliefs given to me by my family and I've started exploring social situations a whole lot more than I ever have in my life.
I've also found that being forced to read and write about <u>The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test</u> and <u>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</u> has helped me, because I find Ken Kesey to be such an inspiration
