<p>Okay, so I'm going to be a grad student in 2 years, but chances are that I'll end up in a small department, and small departments aren't very conducive to socializing. Plus, many grad students are REALLY busy (too busy to ever socialize), and then grad school comes in the frightening period of life when many people get married and then REALLY don't have time for you anymore.</p>
<p>So then I want to hang out with undergrads. I'm not a person who likes to party or anything, but at least I'm more likely to meet new people I can find common ground with, perhaps.</p>
<p>Not at all…I know plenty of grad students who chill with undergrads a lot. Especially in schools where some undergrad upper level classes have grad students in them.</p>
<p>I think it can depend. I’ve hung out with grad students who are members of the same student organization (they were grad students in that subject) and I’ve hung out with grad students who were previously undergrads at my university, and I’ve hung out with grad students who were both. That’s not creepy. Its also not creepy if I met a grad student in a bar randomly and we hung out there… It’s not as though I have an immediate aversion to hanging with someone who was a grad student. </p>
<p>The only creepy ways I could see are hanging with TAs while they are your TAs. That’s a little off to me.</p>
<p>I thought it was weird when I saw my TA driving up past the dorms one saturday then a few weeks later kissing his girlfriend outside my building.</p>
<p>One of my best friends when I was an undergrad was a grad student. It’s not like you’ll have a stamp on your forehead labeling that you’re a grad student.</p>
<p>Funny story… My friends and I were playing Humans vs. Zombies with nerf guns around the science buildings at night. There was a physics grad student working late, and he came out and asked if he could take a break with us. We lent him a gun, and he was pretty good! We met up at a couple more games later that term, but he didn’t hang out with us much besides that. He seemed pretty settled in life with other friends, though, and he lived off campus. Maybe if he was in the grad student housing he would have been a part of our friend group, or maybe he was just closer with other people. Maybe it was also because we were all freshmen and I don’t know how old he was… But I certainly didn’t think it was creepy. Pretty much once you’re a sophomore or higher, you’ve grown out of the peer phase and you’re ready and comfortable to hang out with people of different ages. Just get to know whoever matches interests with you.</p>
<p>It is not “creepy” at all. I also know graduate students that I would say I “hanged out” with. I sometimes question if they see us as young since we ( recent freshmen) have just graduated from high school and completely new to the entire college thing. As a previous poster stated above, freshmen year everything is tense and there are many questions. Students see things different from freshmen since it is all familiar( I think).</p>