In which a banquet forced me to confront my introversion

I went to Carleton’s varsity banquet last night, even though I’m not on the actual varsity fencing team. They put my name on the list without even asking any questions, and I actually just walked in and sat down at the table without even showing my ticket (luckily enough, because I didn’t have the ticket). Which is all to say that it wasn’t exactly an exclusive event.

        Anyway! The banquet itself isn’t really important, and there’s nothing really interesting to say about it. What is interesting, though, is what happened afterwards. I was there for about two and a half hours, with maybe a couple hundred people there. We were unlucky enough to get the table closest to the speakers, so the music was so loud you had to lean towards the people beside you to talk to them. When all the awards had been given out, I basically just said goodbye to my friend (and none of the other people I kind of know) and took off as quickly as I could. I’m sure it was rude and etc. but I just wanted out! So I left, and I’m walking around wearing a suit, and I was just so glad to be alone. I missed the bus, met up with a guy I kinda know and hadn’t spoken to all night (he was at a different table), and he knew the way to the light rail train station so we could get back to Carleton and I could take the bus from there.

        After we got off the train and he left, I just started getting incredibly tired, as well as an instant headache. I’ll blame that part on the music. The other thing is I started thinking about stuff I should have done at the banquet (actually socialized with people, for example) and being lightly miserable. Really just wanted to get home and crawl into bed. So I hopped on the bus and did that, and remembered that, oh yeah, I’m really introverted. And that’s what this post is really about!

        I don’t dislike people in general, and I like the people I know. I’m not trying to avoid you! Really! What happens is this: I need to be alone when I work, because it’s really hard to keep up three conversations and write an essay at the same time. When I want to relax, I prefer to be by myself. And then suddenly I’m “too busy” to sign into Miranda and talk to the people I know and love. And I say I’ll be around more often, because being alone all the time is depressing and bad, and then it doesn’t really happen. And that sucks.

        The absolute worst case scenario is when I either spend a lot of time with a few people (having friends over for the entire weekend like I used to in junior high and high school) or any amount of time with a lot of people (parties, banquets). Then I get mentally and emotionally drained, and it puts me off for a long time afterwards. When I went to the Halloween party in October, I was miserable literally all weekend. It isn’t as bad this time, though I don’t know why. I’m feeling mostly better, at any rate. Having a hard time getting settled in to work, though.

        Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is an actual thing that happens to people other than just me. Odds are it’ll seem familiar if you’re introverted, because I’ve realized in retrospect that it has pretty much always happened and I just never realized it until I really thought about it. Maybe you’ll notice it from now on.

        Ok this is getting long and I’m really just procrastinating. Tl;dr I half-ass an apology, rationalize my failure to socialize, half-heartedly justify my continued status as a hermit, and try to remember from now on to accept my introversion. Denial doesn’t really get me anywhere.

Some random tidbits about my day/recent happenings:

• I mentioned a long time ago the gender differences between beginner fencers - in retrospect I should have emphasized that this was mainly a thing beginners did, because there’s no difference at all between the more experienced fencers. The girls are as competitive as the guys, if they’ve been doing it for at least a year. The update on this story is that pretty much everyone who wasn’t serious about fencing has stopped coming. I think I’m staying in foil, and I’m the only beginner doing that, because the foil teams were already full. There are two (maybe only one now) girls who stayed for sabre, both of whom I think were aggressively recruited for the team. They’ve been getting a lot of individual training from the coaches. Then there’s two guys who are doing epee, again because that team needed people. And that’s it, about five people of the (if I remember right) thirty or so who paid $80 for the beginner course and club fees. The two girls in sabre (given the nature of the weapon) are as aggressive as any of the guys, so the point I made in the original post is basically moot.
• I met Dr. Masako Hirotani today to discuss volunteering at her lab. When I first got there she was talking to a student from Japan (she’s Japanese, I believe, though her English is quite good so she may have been born here) about whether you should say “that makes sense” or “that make sense”, except at the speed they talk it’s pretty hard to tell the difference. We spoke for a bit about my skills and interests in regards to the lab, then I went to a meeting with a few of the other students working in her lab. One of whom is in my Phonetics class, the other of whom is the president of the cognitive science undergraduate group thing, and was born in PEI! So that’s cool. We’re looking at doing tours of the lab for high school students so they can learn about how cool cog sci is and stuff.
• Went to one psychology study earlier today, being conducted by a young guy. Possibly a graduate student doing his own research. He was pretty tired. I should note the way experiments are conducted - to avoid affecting the results by giving you subtle feedback on what you’re doing, the experimenters tell you what you’re going to be doing and then leave you alone to do it. You have to do a lot of training to properly conduct experiments, even if you’re only going to be around the subject for a minute or two - so more experienced experimenters are pretty careful around their subjects. Younger ones less so, and this was the first time I’d been around someone who seemed like some regular person who happened to be doing research.
• Went to a second study a short time ago. Found out I wrote it down as 4:30 when it was actually at 3:30. The experimenter was again someone young, and she was understandably unhappy. This is where the younger experimenters thing comes in, because I apologized and stuff and she didn’t even acknowledge that I’d just accidentally screwed up. In my (admittedly small) experience, I figured someone older would be more understanding. Could be I’m wrong and taking it personally, but I felt terrible and she did as much as possible to make that worse. On the bright side, I may not be penalized because she said she’d reschedule me in a couple of weeks. An older experimenter would probably just dock the required 1% from me and be done with it.

Anyway, I’m off to help set up the strips for the fencing tournament being held here this weekend. I hurt my leg last week (pushed myself too hard when I was trying to be tough) so I won’t be competing, but I’m probably going to go watch with my parents so they can see what it’s like and I can learn what to expect if I ever get to compete.

Male sparring, female submission, and fencing

It is not - as it seems to many women - that men are bums who seek to deny women authority. Many men are inclined to jockey for status, and challenge the authority of others, when they are talking to men too. If this is so, then challenging a woman’s authority as they would challenge a man’s could be a sign of respect and equal treatment, rather than lack of respect and discrimination. The inequality of the treatment results not simply from the men’s behaviour alone but from the differences in men’s and women’s style: Most women lack experience in defending themselves against challenges, which they misinterpret as personal attacks on their credibility.

        A very interesting quote from an article in my applied linguistics class about gender differences in language. The author, a woman and an expert in her field (sociolinguistics), cited various examples of men controlling conversation - even men who knew nothing about linguistics trying to challenge her authority.

        Then she cited a study where pairs of men, pairs of women, and mixed pairs were videotaped while discussing the effect of television violence on children. Before the discussion, some of the subjects were given extra information on the subject - basically, making them the experts in their pair. Men, when confronted with a male expert, would often gain the upper hand in the conversation. When confronted with a female expert, the men would control the conversation and the woman - despite being more knowledgeable - would spend MORE time agreeing with the man than they normally did. And when the man in a mixed pair was the expert, he would control the conversation from beginning to end.

        I felt this was a very utopian quote, despite the whole gender imbalance thing. Or maybe even because of it. I wouldn’t say that being a utopian is “a male thing” - rather, I’d say that it’s all the more impressive for a girl to hold her ground against this kind of jockeying for position. And, I think, that it would be good for we Y-chromosome folk (men) to be conscious of our tendency to take control and quell it somewhat to level the playing field.

        Case in point: There are a lot of girls in the fencing club, especially among the beginners, and even moreso among the foilists. There are, by my count, three male beginners fencing foil and… five or six girls. You know what happens when two guys fence? Intense competition. I fenced a guy last night who’d been dominating in his bouts against a few of the girls, and destroyed him - the score was 5-1. We shook hands, and he told me I was the “king of parrying.” Funny that I didn’t parry once the entire time, except to counterparry (ok, the distinction is kinda important) his ripostes.

        When I fence the other guy, who’s less competitive with me but more aggressive against the girls, it’s more or less the same - we’re always testing each other to see who will win this time. But as I said, when he fences one of the girls, he goes nuts (which is poor technique) and tends to win because they back off. Case further in point: when two girls fence each other, it’s pretty much an even split.

        Case further in point, the girls fence each other on pretty much even footing. When I fence one of the girls, I try to give constructive criticism so they can beat me next time. I try not to use the same trick over and over, but if they do fall for a nasty one, I’ll show them how they can stop it. But, yes, I do try to control the bout. Why? Because the person in control is the one who gets to attack, and I want to practice and learn what works and what doesn’t. When I started fencing, I thought I could be a master defender and win through perfect reactions, but I lost every damn time. I know winning doesn’t matter, because it’s all for practice, but half-assed practice is almost worthless. So I go all out, and occasionally, that does result in a one-sided bout. I love to lose, though, because then I get twice as much experience. I can learn what they did well on the offensive, and I can learn what I did poorly on the defensive.

        However, I admit one failing in this - the extremely aggressive girls were told to fence sabre (slashing weapon, run at each other and swing), and the tall girls were told to fence epée (long pokey weapon, touch them before they touch you) so that left the submissive girls on foil. Also the girls who were too meek to insist on fencing a different weapon. So, yes, there are girls who dominate the dudes, and guys who don’t try to compete against them. Just not among the ones I fence with.

Post-party weekend

(is that a bad joke about post-partum depression, I hope not)

        Alright so back from class, here’s how my weekend went after the party. This is some reaction to it, and some funny stories about Halloween.

        I slept in a bit on saturday, got up feeling like I sincerely did NOT want to be in my room. I figured I should sit in my room and study, but it was just not going to happen. My laptop was in the living room, by the couch, so I sat down there and booted it up. All well and good, then my mom gets up and is on her laptop and turns on the TV. Oh no. Television. Much as I hate it, it is there, and I end up getting distracted by it constantly. I spend a few hours doing stuff on the internet and talking to Britt about how busy I am and how I’m not keeping my promises to her and stuff like that. Savin’ it for another post. Wait for it. Anyway, eventually around maybe 1:45 pm or something? I got off my butt and went over to my dad’s so I could be alone.

        By 3 pm, I had showered and gotten my stuff organized, but no matter what I did I couldn’t really sit down and do any homework. My dad’s house just doesn’t have any place for me to work - I have no desk, the table is covered in crap, etc. I ended up accomplishing stuff by setting my laptop aside and using the piles of wood my dad had ordered as a desk. I knew, of course, that I could spend the weekend relaxing - but I needed to do work to keep myself busy while I was secluding myself, so I ended up taking notes on the fifth chapter of my linguistics textbook, doing the homework questions for it, and my french homework.

        Sunday, Halloween, I… hmm… I didn’t do much for most of the day. The most notable thing is, of course, trick or treating children. My dad bought candy - two boxes of 94 chocolate bars (two to each child) and two boxes of 24 bags of cheesies (do real people say that, cheetos seems like such an awkward thing to say - anyway, one per child) - so that’s enough candy for 130 children. We had 12 trick or treaters. Four children, eight teenage girls. One teenage girl said she liked my Born of Osiris hoodie and I said “eh, they’re alright” because alright is the best word to describe them. Other than that people just seemed to walk around in costumes without going to any houses. So now we have a disgusting amount of candy and I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it.

        My mom had at least 50 trick or treaters, when I last checked in with her, but according to my dad that was because she lives near a bunch of low-rent apartments - most of which are along the bus route that comes to Carleton. Huh. Well, kids. Around my dad’s it’s just old people and people with older kids. Does that mean he lives more in the suburbs than my mom? Ah well.

        Oh, and sweet story about the Halloween party:

        Near the end of the conversation with my coach and the two guys from Ottawa U, our hostess dropped by and flaunted her numerous assets for our benefit. But we would not be swayed from our riveting fencing discussion. After a brief lull later, one of the guys from Ottawa U remarked that we deserved a Darwin Award for spectacular failure to procreate.

        “Given the choice of finding an attractive female to talk to, or talking to a couple of dudes about fencing, we’re like ‘oh man you could try this, or try that’ and there’s hot women like right there! Right there! And we’re like 'fencing, awesome!’”

        edit: Oh and I watched The Trotsky (Canadian film) and the first three episodes of The World God Only Knows (subbed anime via Crunchyroll) while waiting for non-existent trick or treaters, and liked them both a fair bit. The Trotsky isn’t a must-watch, but I enjoyed it. You might enjoy it a tiny bit less if you don’t know french. The World God Only Knows is about a guy who’s pro at dating sims but has never even held hands with a girl, and he accidentally signs a contract with the devil to collect souls that are living in the hearts of girls by - of course - kissing them. If that premise sounds awesome, you should watch it. Otherwise I have nothing to say to you.

Halloween party!

Alright, so now that I’m done recuperating, I shall post about the Halloween party I went to on friday - the first real party I’ve ever been to, to tell you the truth. It was the Halloween party for Carleton’s fencing club, and members from the Ottawa U fencing club were invited as well. I’ll try to run through the night in a relatively linear fashion or at least an interesting way.

        This was the first time I’d been surrounded by so many people for so much time in a while, the last being my going away party in July. That was 8-10 people, and this was 16-20 people I think. The going away party was at a friend’s house, on a farm, so it was pretty spacious. This party was in a four-room apartment. There was a bedroom, a kitchen (drinks), a living room? (candy), and a side room that might have been a bedroom or a living room or… something (dance floor). A friend of a friend volunteered to DJ, so there was plenty of loud music to be had.

        When I got there, around 8:40 pm or so, there were only a handful of people there. One of our coaches, the hostess, another beginner, a dude I didn’t recognize, and a girl I didn’t recognize. People trickled in as the night went on, and I introduced myself/was introduced to everyone by name and by weapon of choice. The only new people I remember are the ones who introduced themselves after we had been talking for a bit, which consists of the two people who were there when I first arrived. Other than that, I remember no names. I think I should feel bad about that, but at the same time, can you blame me when someone says “hey I’m x, I fence with y, see you later man” and then doesn’t speak to me again? I know the faces I saw, but the names just disappeared.

        I spent most of the night talking to people I knew and the girl (Emily) who was there when I arrived, mostly because they saw me doing nothing I think. I was getting pretty bored around 10 pm or something and considering leaving, then got into a deep fencing conversation with the coach and a couple of guys from the Ottawa U fencing club, and that lasted for like 1.5-2 hours or something. So that was cool. Then our coach left, and “left me in charge” because I was one of the few sober people. A little bit after that I was asked to drive a couple home (they drove me home after fencing on thursday) and it took until sometime after 1 am to get the drunk boyfriend out of the party. Every time we’d try to leave, he’d get in the middle of a ten minute goodbye, and then wander off to do the same to someone else. But that was some good bonding time and anyhow I left sometime after 1 am.

        So I was there for… about four hours, and I ate way more candy and chips than was absolutely necessary. Oh, and I was dressed up as Jack Skellington, from Nightmare Before Christmas! Man, that was an important detail. I’ll get some pictures up in a bit. However, getting my face painted and everything made my room kind of a wreck. When I got home in the morning I really didn’t want to clean it up, and I was really pissed off about it when I woke up.

        That’s an important detail because I was pissed about everything when I woke up. I slept in a bit, but even that didn’t help. Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was the overload of junk food, but I don’t think it was either of those things - because this is exactly how I felt the next morning after my going away party, and exactly how I felt every time I had people stay the weekend at my place in junior high. True, any time those kinds of gatherings happened (I don’t think they really qualify as parties) I ate too much junk food and stayed up late, but I just think it’s too much time around too many people that really got to me.

        Essentially, what I’m trying to say is that I consistently forget how introverted I am because it’s socially expected of me to do these things and then it destroys me for days. It’s like an emotional hangover, or whiplash. Or something? Insert your own good metaphor. The moral of the story is I don’t feel any better until I stop talking to people and seclude myself and generally I have a hard time doing work, which means a party on friday eliminates my productivity for most of a weekend.

        I think vael has expressed a similar effect before, or maybe that was me. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this anyway. I’m just not sure if it was my idea or not. At any rate, it’s draining for me to spend time around people. I don’t know whether I’ll try to explain that or not when the fencing club inevitably asks me how I enjoyed the party.

        I think this post contains everything I wanted to say, though perhaps with less explanation than I planned, but I need to go to class now so that’s how my friday way. I’ll post more things later I think. I just don’t want to have one humongous mega-post.