Leaving the Background Covered

How do you decide what is important to tell people? Especially for out age demographic a lot of students base where they go to college on where everyone else in their school is going to college. & those students who go somewhere else, tend to be looking for a new experience, new people, a new start. I was definitely one of them, and at my university I have met so many people who are trying to do that as well. But how important is all your background information for your new friends to understand you. To some extent I want to argue that its not always necessary for people to see what goes on behind the scene, if you can share with them who you are now, then who you use to be and what made you who are shouldn't be as important. 

But what about those days when you have the ghost that come back to haunt you. & Can you ever really feel as close to the people you meet in college without telling them this information as oppose to the relationships you have with the people who went through it with you? How important in the background information in developing friendships? In college my friends know a great deal about me, about my family history, but the one thing I really wanted to escape from high school I did. It didn't change who I am but it did changes peoples perceptions of me. Because I omitted this one information bit from my college life that was such a huge deal in high school people view me with more respect. But how do you draw that line? Between what is okay to tell them, and what you might want to keep to yourself & still develop healthy relationships? 

I don't have an answer, but my advice? Go slow, start with the top layers, and keep the darker stuff, the stuff you aren't sure you want to share yet, further down. If you get there and decide to share then great! But at least you gave yourself a longer chance to think, once you say something you can't take it back.