Abandon ship.

The outsider (and no, I'm not talking about the book..that would be The Outsiders). Everybody knows that feeling. The one where you feel like you are the only person in the room who has no idea what is going on and everybody knows something you don't.  It's not a fun feeling. It makes you want to abandon ship and get out of there as fast as possible. I mean it's not like anybody is even going to notice you left, right? Why do we have that feeling? Okay, that's a silly question. Of course you are going to feel out of place in a place you have never been or when you are around people you don't know. But I guess what I'm asking is, why are these feeling so strong? I mean, normally after the initial stage of self-consciousness we realize it's not as bad as we thought. I think Jackie Hendricks summed up why those feelings are strong. It's because we feel like we are the only ones experiencing that phenomenon. And that's what I appreciated the most during Jackie's speech. He reminded us that we aren't alone in those feelings, that everyone is having the same experiences. Kudos for the good advice.