Julia and I were talking about college essays and I decided to look back at mine and see what I wrote. I remembered writing about NEFFA but didn't really remember what I had said. One line in particular jumped out at me, though. I'm talking about how nice it is to have so many dancing cousins, and I write:

when we go into the main halls to contra-dance, we have enough people that each of us can have a partner and no one has to dance with the sketchy old-folks who make up a large fraction of the population.

I wrote that, really? I would definitely not say something like that now. Maybe I'm more part of the dancing community than I was then. This was before I'd ever asked someone to dance who I wasn't dating or the cousin of. But still. It's also funny how many different people read that essay and didn't comment on that line.