<p>I’ll try to do my extra curricular activities this coming year. The thing is, I spent a lot of my time studying so I don’t get too much time to do other things. I go out with my friends but they’re all guys and none of them have girlfriends either.</p>
<p>I try to take shortcuts by meeting girls in my class but since I’m in engineering they’re almost all taken.</p>
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<p>And the girls in your classes are there to work. They’re not there for social reasons. I think this is one of the big reasons why this isn’t working out for you.</p>
<p>Spending a lot of time studying is fine, but college is also about doing things other than studying. Maybe you can encourage some of your guy friends to join a club with you. You’d be amazed, if you structure your time well and stay organized, how much stuff you can fit into your schedule without having your studies suffer.</p>
<p>Reminds me of something my adviser told me a few semesters back:</p>
<p>Me: I want to take “So or So ‘soft engineering’ class” or be a TA
Him: You need a thesis, not a girlfriend.</p>
<p>'How about joining in on some sort of extracurricular activity? Are you musical? Athletic? Neither? Find a local play. Try out for the play, or be a tech and work backstage and hang out with the actors. Take up knitting, or basketweaving. Archery. Anything. There are plenty of extracurricular activities that don’t require any discernible skills.</p>
<p>“Friendly” plus “smiling” plus “giving people personal space” yields “non-creepy.”</p>
<p>Try the friendly/smiling/giving people personal space thing along with one of the extracurriculars that you are about to start in on, and you should meet people. Just go with the goal of meeting people, not honing in on girls with your antennae and getting your mandibles around them. Just meet people first, make friends, and when you find a new friend that’s a girl that you think you like, see if she wants to go for coffee or dinner or something.'</p>
<p>wouldn’t it seem strange if a 4th/5th yr/grad student joined a club just to meet a gf? It seems like its mostly freshmen who join such things. Also, when I tried joining clubs, it was hard to appear friendly and smile due to being really shy and anxious that everyone seemed to have friends there and I was the only one alone</p>
<p>“The hairy, smelly anime freak isn’t available to give the tour? Oh well, let’s just make the class babe do it and hope they don’t judge us too harshly.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was on purpose. Same reason every college’s engineering school likes to plaster pictures of female students and black students all over their web pages, instead of a sea of Asians and Eddie Deezen look-alikes.</p>
<p>:-D</p>
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<p>Well, “getting to know the hot undergrad who convinced him to join the band” was basically my husband’s agenda for joining the Rice band when he was a first year grad student, though he figured he’d join anyhow so he could keep playing his horn regularly and meet some people in Houston. He didn’t end up with the undergrad that convinced him to join the band, but he <em>did</em> end up with the cute brunette freshman who played keyboard. ;)</p>
<p>(We had the “what’s the first thing you noticed about me” conversation once. I said, “Your cute blue eyes.” He said, without missing a beat, “The red tank top you were wearing.”)</p>
<p>To meet people, you have to stretch your comfort zone. It’s tough, but you have to tell your nervousness to shut up and then just walk up to someone, smile, make eye contact, and say, “Hi. I’m ___<strong><em>. I’m new here, and I’m a little shy, but I was hoping to make some friends and have some fun/learn something new by joining </em></strong>.” If you try this with a friendly-looking girl, even if she’s with someone, she’ll probably introduce you to other people, too, and then just keep on with the friendly thing. Suggest that you all grab a bite to eat after whatever activity you’re doing. (My husband and I ended up on our first date this way.)</p>
<p>It wasn’t weird. I didn’t <em>know</em> he was a grad student when I started dating him, but it didn’t take me very long to get over the initial shock. =)</p>
<p>ah ok. I just get really self-conscious about what others are thinking when they see a student as old as me who goes out to meet people. I’d imagine they would think I’m a lonely loser, since most 4th/5th year students already have their friends</p>
<p>Well, you don’t have your age tattooed on your forehead. (Or presumably you don’t; that would be silly since it changes every year.)</p>
<p>When you get to college and grad school it’s kind of like everyone’s just college/grad-school-aged. Alternately, keep wearing pajamas to class and everyone will think you’re still an undergrad.</p>
<p>hahahaahahaha thermo1, you always sound desperate when it comes to girls…
I’ve met many grad school girls and they are all pretty nice overall. I mean they are both beautiful and mature and easier to talk to (I find freshmen girls harder to talk to because I never understand what they say). But that is because I do prefer mature women.</p>
<p>When I met my husband, I’d been in grad school one semester, and he was brand new. I thought he was VERY young (younger than me), so I offered to show him around town. I was 22 at the time. When he told me he was 30, I didn’t believe him and made me show me his driver’s license. I thought it was cool that he was older, because he’d done lots of stuff such as hitchhiking across the US and working as a lumberjack in Alaska. He was more mature than the younger guys, too! So age can be a big plus. :-)</p>