On Meeting People and Doing Stuff
It’s been a whirlwind of things ever since I’ve gotten here and I must say the most interesting times I’ve had are not concerning work nor places I’ve seen, but the people I meet. I think I’ve connected with more people in the past month than I have since the beginning of college (beginning of TAMS might still be ahead in the game though), thanks to the insane amount of friendly interns at work, Ouyang and his program at UCSF, and JJ/Paul with their chums at Berkeley. It hasn’t always been easy (I find that looking for the correct dials to turn my weirdness levels to is always a challenge for non-engineering crowds), but it’s certainly been fun.
There’s a key difference between forming a connection and just making an acquaintance - we’re talking about that kind of friendship that is kind of weird on Facebook, because you aren’t /really/ friend-friends and you aren’t just brief acquaintences either so it feels sort of awkward (at least for me it does - the large majority of my friends on Facebook fall in one of the previous two categories =X). However I feel that that sort of thing is exactly the tipping point for casual social interaction - you spend just enough time spent talking and/or doing stuff (say, a weekend? how very convenient) such that there exists enough common ground that it’s not terribly awkward to get to know the other party further. You have a chance to break past that initial outer persona that you’re stuck with as an acquaintance and get to see just a bit of what that person is, you know, /normally/ like.
And the truly exciting part for me is that everyone I connect with is so interesting. And I’m not talking about the superficial personas, but the core of the person - their values, their drive, their goal. As soon as a certain level of comfort is reached between two people - this artifical wall that we put up comes down and I am just overwhelmed by who they are. It’s a rush I don’t usually get to experience often - and as a closet extrovert it’s rather enjoyable.
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Now I realize this all sounds unbelievably fruity and if I just met you also comes off as veeeery odd, but in the end you’ll find out I’m plenty odd and had an unbelievable amount of thinking time on the Caltrain with my DS batteries out (knew I should’ve packed that charger) so take it how you will.
Or just ignore the whole thing and just pretend I say “hey, it was great fun meeting so many different people - and if we get the chance I’d like to hang out again sometime”. That would be fine too.
Cheers!
