Is there any good reason to go? What’s the benefit to you? If you just think it would be nice to have a professor mentor/advisor/rec letter writer, then occasionally drop by his office to say hi and catch up on news, but don’t go to lunch. If there is no benefit to you, then drop it. If visiting with him is awkward generally, it will be so much more so over lunch, so why put yourself through that?
I don’t think we know enough about the situation to really rule anything out at this point… a lot of this is just speculation.
Although statistically speaking, if you were to give 10 straight guys the option of going to lunch with an attractive female student or a male student, most would probably pick the female student. Whether that’s meaningful or not, who knows…
And if you gave 10 straight gals the option of lunch with an attractive male student or a male student, do you think the results would be any different?? I don’t so not sure what your point it is…
You are probably right, but that’s not relevant to the OP’s situation. Men operate differently than women…
Again though, all of this is pure speculation
My reaction is that you’re reading more into this than it there, but I don’t think there’s any reason you need to get lunch with him sometime if you really don’t want to.
And we still don’t know what happened at this lunch.
What happened in the end? Did OP end up going?
Sorry!
I have been busy with others things and put it off.
Will let you know how it goes in a week or two.
It turned out just fine. He is a curious guy who is probably a bit bored.
We have a few things in common and he seems to think I am interesting, probably because I am a foreigner and am very different than the traditional student attending my university.
He did ask to see me off campus next time though, which will not happen. So he might be testing the water - but I don’t think he would do anything inappropriate unless I gave him the wrong kind of signals.