new people everywhere

two things i'm always surprised by every single fall is how many new faces and new books i encounter. everytime i turn a corner at gse, i have made a new friend. inevitably, a 30-second conversation turns into 5 minutes and that turns into a chain of emails that will hopefully materialize into a cup of coffee or happy hour or a study session. i love people; they are one of the reasons i take up a lot of the projects that i do. and when it comes down to it, i'd rather spend time listening to and learning from people than i would from sitting in front of a computer or with a book.

every once in a while, someone may approach me to warn me about someone else or to tell me about some encounter with a person. usually, the person in question is someone i really want to get to know. at first, i am never sure what to do with this kind of information, so i put it in my back vault somewhere as a kind of warning, and then i go about my business and try to spend time with the person and hope that our meetings will materialize into something great. more than likely, the person who delivered the warning or mentioned the strange encounter was referencing a specific incident and as we all know from our own lives, we can't really be judged by just one incident. at the end of the day, no one can really know us from just a few meetings, and people definitely can't know us just from their encounters of us in a specific context (like a class or work or whatever).

sometimes i forget how much of each other people soak up when they are in a new environment, how much they are wanting to know others and wanting to give off the best first impressions. this building is a space where i (somewhat sadly) spend a lot of time so i don't feel that uncomfortable here, despite that i am often meeting new people in the space of gse. it's not a place i'd call home, but it's a space i have come to know pretty well, and still, i am always alarmed by the fresh new faces, and excited to get to know them all.