Neighbour (Stan x Kyle) (South Park)

1. Expectations

Kyle's POV:

Expectations are a fascinating phenomenon. Not only does it mirror who you are as a person, but also what you expect from others.

For instance, someone who often has positive expectations is more often than not labelled an optimist and therefore views the world from a positive light.

Optimists amuse me because I generally cannot relate to them. My life has never been easy enough for me to be positive about it anymore. But at times I break my pattern of negative thoughts and have high hopes. More so, when I wish something to turn a specific way. Especially if it's realistic.

So me going to college was full of high expectations. In my mind, I was going to strive there. I was finally going to barge out of my pupa, spread my wings and become a butterfly.

Though I had been planning to apply for Yale for years at this point, I was a bit sceptical of getting an admission. I knew I had the grades they required, but something made me unsure. Something within me made me feel as if I wouldn't get in, anyway. Maybe they already knew that I didn't belong there. Maybe they knew how pathetic I would look.

But strangely enough, I got in. And here I was inside my tiny new first-year dorm room. It was dark and barely let in any light through the tall, wooden windows. The bare observation of the sunbeam that managed to get through into my room made me feel as if I was more alone than ever. As if even the sun couldn't even hold me company in this humongous school.

I reckon I was as well. I knew nobody here yet, and in a way I almost felt as if I didn't want to, either. They all seemed so jolly over stuff I felt was nothing to have a reaction over at all. It all seemed so grey.

I had tried decorating my dorm, but it's hard to make your own space out of course literature and pens. So, by now it's only a representation of my unfamiliarity of Yale.

I didn't think I'd be scared to leave home. I had been prepared for this for 4 years at this point, and it somehow seemed as if I was already mentally here at times. But I was wrong. It's horrifying.

My first class wasn't like I expected, either. In high school I was used to being the smart one. I was always the teachers favourite. Not because I was a suck up, but because I actually tried to achieve something. I wasn't there to play. I meant business.

I knew I wanted to get into Yale and study law, so I did everything in my power to get in. I stayed up plenty of nights studying, skipped parties, stopped playing basketball. I did fucking everything.

The amount of time and discipline I put into school, I had planned out very well. No one was on my level. No one was like me. I was on top of the world.

But here I'm a nobody. All of the other students are just as serious-minded as I was, if not more, and all of a sudden my whole identity as the smart kid disappeared and I was left with no knowledge about myself. If I'm not the smart one, then who am I?

After a month I had tried my best to settle in, but I was still uncomfortable. I lost myself within the other students and none of them could amuse me at all. I wasn't interested in making friends with them. Some people in my classes were nice, but I didn't bother to make an effort to get to know them.

Gradually, I stopped caring for my classes. Homework and notes from lectures started to bulk up on my desk and I couldn't care less to touch them. I felt dumb compared to my classmates and it made me question my ability to get an education at all.

Long story short, I had gotten depressed and nothing made me happy.

So with no friends and no motivation for school, I was close to giving up and move back home.

It also didn't help that my suffering all through high school by staying home studying instead of socialising and partying gave me no experience with drinking. How do you even make new friends?

Then all of a sudden, I found someone. Or, someone found me.

One day I was making a hopeless attempt to study at the library, I feel a gentle nudge on my shoulder, and there she was.

Nichole.

We hadn't really spoken since ninth grade chemistry class when we were lab partners. And though my previous feelings for her had ebbed away, I still admired her. She was determined and serious, but lighthearted and never failed to make me ease up. I trusted her with our chemistry project and that couldn't be said about most people I've done projects with.

So it was to no surprise that she was at Yale, even though I didn't know she'd be there.

We quickly became friends and started reminiscing about the past. Thankfully she was just as sweet as she was is high school.

Not only did Nichole help me get motivated again, she gave me a purpose to stay, a purpose to study, a purpose to actually achieve something again.

Though some of the students were better than me, I could still compete with them. Nothing is impossible until you say it is, and I wasn't planning on making that announcement soon.

I was going to beat law to it's core, Elle Woods style. No, it wasn't hard, and no, I certainly wasn't going to let my classmates outshine me.

And just like that it clicked. I could own Yale if I wanted, set the new standard. I'm here to get that degree to every cost and graduate on top of my class, regardless of how hard, regardless of how impossible it might seem.
I am Kyle fucking Broflovski and nothing can stop me.

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