RE: Another question to ponder
However, once you find common interests with one,
two or three people in the group, you'll find that bonding with them
will be easier and the differences will tend to become less important.
Instead of being an "old" person with a bunch of "young kids", you'll be
the guy who shares good fishing tips with John, good restaurant
addresses with Sharon and talks about this new hot motorcycle model that
came out last month with Jerry.
I'll second that resoundingly.
I've often found myself the only female in a group of males, since I was a teenager (and I'm about to turn 42). It's just how it worked out--I'm interested in programming, gaming, chess, anime, star trek, tracking, math, monty python... while there are certainly more women around overall in these groups, it's still not at all unusual for me to find myself the only female in the room, even now. I took a technical math class just a couple of years ago, and I was the only girl in a class of 35.
I've never not been accepted to the group, ever, and that's pretty much exactly what I do. Since I have all those lovely geek leanings, there's always plenty for me to find in common with the others. Even if I didn't have that, though, I would pay attention to what the common topics of conversation were.
I remember doing a unit on sound and graphics in one of my programming classes, we had to do a figure doing jumping jacks and play a tune. I chose the theme from Legend of Zelda for the music because I had realized that the people in this class were particularly interested in video games.
The instructor walked in to find the whole class gathered around the computer watching the animation, tickled pink. Sure, it was a simple program, but that was the thing that solidified my position in the group as "one of us, just oddly-shaped."
No matter who you are, you have something in common with anyone you meet, all you have to do is find it. You and a few others might be the only ones with kids, or the only ones with teenagers, or the only ones who have ever spontaneously burst into a rousing chorus of "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay"...
Half the battle is to stop focusing on how you're different and don't fit in and to start looking for ways that you are the same.
Z
INTP
Generation X
68.44181% - Geek Goddess
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end."--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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RE: Another question to ponder: From: France Baril
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