go figure

[godream]

I have always been fascinated by other people's views of interaction patterns, of the cliques and groups and connections that I also know first-hand. Maybe mostly because I'm not all that hot at picking up on that stuff myself -- social subtlety is definitely not a strong point of mine. It's sort of a strange meta-gossip type of topic to talk about, though, which only makes it more interesting to me when it happens. (But I'm not quite certain whether or not to feel really guilty about this or not.)

Comments

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

are you drunk?? ;)


where did that come from?? :)


the only time i here the real contemplative thing seems to be when people are drunk....one converdation the other day went something like this:
Eric: liz... why do women like guys
Eric: i am drunk, but seeking an answer to this deep question
lizfactorial: cause they're just so cute when they ask stupid questions
Eric: as far as I'm concerned, this species shouldn't last another two generations

enjoy your pensivness! :)

[godream.livejournal.com]

You know I'm much too much of a prude for that to be the answer. Nah, just tired, and thinking. There was light discussion of hall politics -- according to Vimal, the reason it really mattered that there were approximately 1.6 billion of us frosh was that it was possible for us to break up into more than one semicoherent social group. Sort of a compare & contrast thing, how we clustered versus how the class of '07 did (or didn't.) Also said if he'd had to pick a frosh for hall chair it would have been James, which I thought was ... interesting.

You should ask Gina for the pictures of Eric and her cake. >:)

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Are the politics on 4E bad? I mostly think of Tetazoo when I think of hall politics.

There are 1.6 billion frosh up here too. Well, actually there were 16, 13 of whom were non-ghosts and 11 of whom, out of those 13, will be back on hall next year (don't know about the ghosts). There's been a surprising lack of politics, but there's been a lot of hall-cest and romantic angst.

[godream.livejournal.com]

Meh, not really -- it's not so much that we're drowning in drama as that I think this stuff is pretty interesting so I probably tend to draw it out of proportion.

There were 17 of us frosh down here; I'm not sure where to draw the lines on who's a ghost and who's not, but most of us were out and about -- but ended up mostly socializing among ourselves, maybe because there were lots of us concentrated in Bemis and the two big social groups among the non-frosh seemed to congregate in deep Goodale and deep Walcott. (I was talking to some people from pi west who said over there the rooms in Hayden are most desirable and the frosh tend to end up at the ends of the hall, and I sorta wonder how that affects hall dynamics.) I feel like over this summer I've gotten the chance to get to know better lots of people who I didn't interact with during the year, which is really awesome... and, I don't know, maybe wondering what we're going to do to make sure the crop of freshmen we're going to get in a month and a half interact with us and not only each other. There'll only be around nine of them, seven in Walcott and two in Goodale, and it'll be interesting to see how things go differently.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

We're more like piwest than like you guys, I guess, in terms of room desirability. Bemis is considered the heart and soul of the hall, and mostly non-frosh live there. The prize room is 666, which is our name for B513 and is always occupied by a respected senior.

However, everyone hangs out in Bemis and the Bemis/Goodale lounge no matter where on the hall their rooms are.

We don't really have multiple distinct social groups...sure, there's hackers, the Guild crowd, the APO crowd, etc (and some in all of the above), but when they're on hall pretty much everyone hangs out together except the ghosts. There was more frosh cohesion this past year than usual, because there were nearly as many frosh as non-frosh, but it's generally accepted that all classes socialize with each other and get to know each other.

Frosh tend to assume unless it's demonstrated otherwise that upperclassmen look down on them and don't really want to socialize with them...leftovers from stupid high school class battles, I guess. If you want them to interact with you, I'd suggest making the first moves yourself.

[godream.livejournal.com]

Frosh tend to assume unless it's demonstrated otherwise that upperclassmen look down on them and don't really want to socialize with them...leftovers from stupid high school class battles, I guess. If you want them to interact with you, I'd suggest making the first moves yourself.
Yeah -- I just wish I'd figured that out in September instead of July. :P

The impression I get is that (in spite of our geographical weirdness) the sort of gently fractured thing we've got going on down here is more the exception than the rule for the hall; just a weird year or something. And again I imagine I'm coming off much harsher than I mean to, it's not really some stupid "us-versus-them" game, I really do adore 4e and am definitely looking forwards to spending three more years here. :)