I had a desperate need to be considered cool. In fact, it may have been the thing that I valued most through high school and into college. So when I started college, I absorbed the cultural values of the college campus wholeheartedly. I valued what the cool kids valued. I did what they did and I did it to a greater degree. I partied hard. I chased girls. I talked loud and brash (still working on that one). I hung with the cool dudes who would enable such behavior. But, I was lost.