"I know this will probably surprise you," a friend said to me recently, "but I was a big nerd in high school."

I took a quick glance at my other friends.

Was he a band geek?

Was she a ditzy cheerleader?

Was my boyfriend the punk/smelly kid/pothead/prude/class clown/prom king?

In college, background is a relative term. Take my roommate for example, who in her high school days was a tie-wearing, purple-eye-shadowed punk. She now owns more pearl necklaces than Macys.

In the beginning, this campus is full of blind-date-like confusion. The mysteries of your friends' pasts -- more intriguing than anything -- are up to interpretation.

Curiously, it takes a while for people to be labeled. Without any rumors, preconceived opinions and dirt on your dormmates, it's hard to really pinpoint who a person is. Even now, as a senior, the depth of a person is hard to determine.

It's a common conundrum -- the question becomes, if you don't know anything about a person's past, can you really be a part of their future?

Add this confusion to one inalienable statement: College has the potential to be the mother of reinvention.

It has been said -- probably by high school counselors -- that college is the perfect time to realize your new identity.

It's the theory of tabula rasa: a blank slate to start with, a brand new from-scratch recipe to concoct.

So in theory, your new friends won't know about the time you barfed in the lunchroom in junior high or your embarrassing odor problem.

Or will they?

I told my theory to a few friends who responded by wrinkling their noses.

Me: "Don't you think people can reinvent themselves when they come to Penn State?"

Friend 1: "Yeah, unless you're from Abington."

Friend 2: "Yeah, unless you're from Pittsburgh."

Friend 3: "Yeah, unless you're from State College."

As it turns out, if you went to high school in Pennsylvania or close to it, you're in good company. People joke that half my high school came to Penn State, and that estimate probably isn't too far off. As a result, my past periodically pops up -- ex-boyfriends, arch nemeses, you name it. Somehow, they all decided to choose Penn State, and somehow, I can't lose them in the 42,000 person crowd.

So, for some, background isn't a mystery. Reinvention is impossible.

On a campus with two degrees of separation, a plethora of weird coincidences and people from high school who you thought you'd never see again, it's hard to escape your past.

Unless you really don't want to. In that case, spare us the stories of senior week, prom, graduation and your high school friends -- we really couldn't care less.