Meeting Cambridge Engineers

This post is about something that is a bit lame on my part. I've realized that I haven't really met any Cambridge engineers, especially 3rd years, until these past few weeks. This is primarily due to the fact that there are 2 other people from MIT in the exchange who are doing civil engineering: Mahalia and Stella. We sit together during lecture, usually have supervisions together, work together, etc. Well, I noticed this at the end of last term when I did the Engineering Area Activity. So at Cambridge, the engineers take general engineering classes for their first two years and then specialize during their 3rd and 4th years. And each engineering area has its own Engineering Area Activity (EAA), usually in the form of many labs. The EAA for civil engineering is surveying, which takes place over few continuous days after the end of classes.

So Mahalia and Stella decided that surveying sounded really boring and not meaningful so they chose to do the EAA for mechanical engineering instead. So I got to the first lecture of surveying and the instructor informs us that we have to be in groups of 2 or 3. I look around and see that everyone already knows each other, has friends, and forms groups really easily. I realized that I didn't know anyone so I just asked to join the 2 people who happened to be sitting in front of me. And now for the 3rd year projects that are due this Friday (ahh!!), the same thing happened. Mahalia and Stella chose to do different projects and I end up sitting in rooms with people that I don't know...

But luckily, my first project is a group project where the professor split us up into groups (by alphabetical order). So I started to spend a lot of time with people in my group and their friends. There are only about 20 something people in both of my projects and everyone already knows each other. These are people I've seen all year but never really made the effort to get to know them. They also already know that I'm from MIT but never got around to talking to me either. Anyway, this whole thing is just kinda sad but at least I got to know a few of them now. In fact, I'm spending so much time with them that I've almost started talking like them. Almost, as in, the use of words like "I've got..", "surely", "literally", and other things that I can't think of at the moment. Don't worry, still can't bring myself to do the whole accent thing.

Not too sure what the whole point of this post is, other than to procrastinate from writing my reports. I guess on one hand, I'm really glad I did this exchange with a program, had MIT people all around, many of whom I got to know a lot better (and bonded with). But on the other hand, there's enough of us that it's too much of a safety net and I didn't have to reach out and find friends. I remember during freshman orientation, everyone was really eager to reach out and meet different people because none of us had any friends. That sounds a little desperate but it's the truth. We didn't have know anyone, didn't have friends, so we made the effort to get to know other people.

So I guess the lesson here is to consciously reach out, network, and get to know people whenever I'm dumped into a new area. MIT-CME people don't count because they didn't become friends through a conscious effort. We sort of just bonded because we were all sharing a similar experience. Like I said, this realization is really lame...