BlogaVlogmas Day 2: Ratios

For most of my youth, my friends have consisted of mostly guys. I was much more of a tomboy back in the days when my muscle mass was about equal to the average smaller-than-average boy my age. I could kick serious butt at handball, was a fearless jungle gym climber, and was a pretty fast sprinter (fie to 23andMe for saying my SNPs reveal an "unlikely sprinter"). Although I wasn't completely devoid of girl friends, if I had to choose, guys were just easier to get along with. There weren't any politics or backstabbing or tears and they didn't care how I was dressed or what my hair was doing that day. (Neither did I, so it was a great relationship.)

At the end of middle school, when everyone except me grew two feet and started being awkward because of body changes, I resisted conforming to girl world. It may have been that I was still super awkward and looked like I came out of a hard day's work at the mines, but I still think that boys were less judgmental of how I acted because I was a such a bro.

Then I learned how to dress myself. And started living with girls. And started connecting with lady-folk through excessive fan-girling and cuddles. And that's when things got tricky.

Because now that we're "adults" there are these functions that don't quite work out if you don't have a date. Like Winter Formals where all you do is waltz. Of course, you can go with all your girl friends, but for dances where the partners have very specific gender-encoded steps, it's difficult to do without, well, men. You could argue that the partners don't have to be of different genders, etc. etc. and that is absolutely true. But if you've been taught the waltz from your perspective, it's hard to switch it up when it's "just us girls." You have to make sure that you've got enough guy friends to make it work and it's just all complicated when it doesn't work out because somebody has to dance with a stranger. 

I'm not at all sure where this is going, but I think the moral has to be: in grad school, with groups of friends, ratios matter. Not only in terms of having different perspectives and conversation topics, but in terms of waltzing logistics. I feel a bit obligated to say that it's not necessarily a gender thing. It's a "who's leading" thing. If you've got enough people to lead and enough to follow, you're golden. You just better make sure everyone will be there.