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Mar. 29th, 2018 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaI've been playing a lot more Pokemon Go now that my diss is done and I'm job-hunting. The game's definitely doing quite a bit to boost my social life, in a very undergrad-y sort of way where people make friends through familiarity in a recurring activity. The nice thing is that I'm also meeting people slightly older than me, or around my age who aren't grad student.
There are still a lot of grad students in this friend group so that's something else we can talk about, but mostly we avoid grad school talk and stick to the game. And there're the jokers who take up the space talking so the quiet ones don't have to.
Overall, it's been nice. I've been getting rides to raids and having meals with them. After Community Day, I got about 6 of them to go to the Getaway with me and we sat and hung out eating food together talking about whatever. All guys, but a mix of ages. I was the eldest person there, but it felt nice to know it didn't matter. And for an all-guy group, everything said at the table was entirely unproblematic™ (and maybe I'm biased but I think largely because these are just good kids generally). I've also been gravitating towards hanging with Tara, who's a staff member in Life Sciences (and who has sort of adopted a couple of the youngest members). It's heartwarming to see us kind of coalescing together as a friend group. We're having a birthday party for one of our friends today who has severe self-esteem issues and depression.
IDK. I'm happy in a non-critical way around them, and I hope I can keep meeting more folks like this IRL moving forward.
I've also been participating in the Samurai Love Ballad: Party and Ikemen Sengoku hashtags on Instagram and been chatting with a couple of people, in comments or DMs, from there too. That has also been interesting! The last time I made friends through a specific fandom was through FFVII, and even then it's not like I was playing the thing... I just knew a friend who had encyclopedic knowledge of it and read more on my own, and then joined a webforum with a FFVII theme but we talked about everything (hi user name="sparklemagpie">!).
It's just all striking to me right now because it's been years since I've made friends outside the grad school and SF convention settings, offline. I'm actually pretty pleased about this. Sure I may not stay friends with them forever but it's soothing to be able to be around people who care and who I can care for with such immediacy in small meaningless gestures.
There are still a lot of grad students in this friend group so that's something else we can talk about, but mostly we avoid grad school talk and stick to the game. And there're the jokers who take up the space talking so the quiet ones don't have to.
Overall, it's been nice. I've been getting rides to raids and having meals with them. After Community Day, I got about 6 of them to go to the Getaway with me and we sat and hung out eating food together talking about whatever. All guys, but a mix of ages. I was the eldest person there, but it felt nice to know it didn't matter. And for an all-guy group, everything said at the table was entirely unproblematic™ (and maybe I'm biased but I think largely because these are just good kids generally). I've also been gravitating towards hanging with Tara, who's a staff member in Life Sciences (and who has sort of adopted a couple of the youngest members). It's heartwarming to see us kind of coalescing together as a friend group. We're having a birthday party for one of our friends today who has severe self-esteem issues and depression.
IDK. I'm happy in a non-critical way around them, and I hope I can keep meeting more folks like this IRL moving forward.
I've also been participating in the Samurai Love Ballad: Party and Ikemen Sengoku hashtags on Instagram and been chatting with a couple of people, in comments or DMs, from there too. That has also been interesting! The last time I made friends through a specific fandom was through FFVII, and even then it's not like I was playing the thing... I just knew a friend who had encyclopedic knowledge of it and read more on my own, and then joined a webforum with a FFVII theme but we talked about everything (hi user name="sparklemagpie">!).
It's just all striking to me right now because it's been years since I've made friends outside the grad school and SF convention settings, offline. I'm actually pretty pleased about this. Sure I may not stay friends with them forever but it's soothing to be able to be around people who care and who I can care for with such immediacy in small meaningless gestures.