Meeting People

I've been trying to adopt a "go out and do shit" mentality during the past week. This naturally extends to "go talk to people." Eek.

It's not that I don't like meeting new people. Once I'm talking to people, it usually works out ok. And in my situation - living in a new place not knowing anybody - if it doesn't go ok, I probably don't have to talk to them again if I just avoid going where I met them. I don't know though. Something about repeatedly walking up to strangers, introducing myself, and trying to say enough about me that people get why I'm talking and asking questions without over-explaining and sounding self-absorbed -- well it gets old after a few repetitions.

I've met a lot of people over the past few days. I had an orientation last week for new faculty in Weinberg College (the college of Northwestern that I'm working in) and met a lot of fellow faculty. That was pretty easy since most of the people there were in a new place. There are a surprising number of new math faculty.

I also wandered around the math department and met people there: faculty who I've been emailing, coordinators for the courses I'm teaching, department admins, my teaching mentor, the chair (actually, she stopped by my office today and unfortunately I was too absorbed in what I was doing to be a particularly good conversationalist).

I've been chatting with people at yoga a bunch, but people at yoga classes do tend to chat a bunch. I almost feel like I'm going through a probationary period since it's pretty normal for people to start taking classes for a few weeks and then stop. We'll see if I end up making friends there. I've found that it generally takes a pretty long time to befriend people through yoga or dance classes since you don't actually spend time during class socializing. I'm definitely still enjoying the yoga itself, and how it can simultaneously get me out of and into my own head. It's more like it gets me out of whatever rut I'm stuck in and back to the larger picture.

My great success of today, though, was stopping by the dance department at Northwestern. I just decided to suck it up and go wander over to the arts complex, and I managed to find a few studios (don't know if there are more) and the dance office. There were two faculty there who were really friendly and helpful, and it turns out that yes, depending on space, faculty can come take classes. One of them even mentioned that they're always looking to collaborate between departments, and I have to say that I'd be seriously interested in getting back into the type of cerebral choreography I played with during college. I have no idea what exactly, but that's what collaboration's for, I guess.

Not to sound entirely pathetic, but I can't wait to have friends around here. Acquaintances and coworkers are fine, but I want to be able to hang out and get a beer on the weekends and just shoot the shit with people. I don't mind spending time by myself but I'm definitely edging up on my limit for alone time.