I need a guide!Follow

This is totally appropriate for a Saturday night, 11:00 pm post.

Know what I would love? A guide to life after you graduate college. High school is simple: you do your classes and choose a college. College is easy. You pick a major, go to class (at times), and eventually graduate and get a job.

After that point I am pretty much lost until you have kids and make friends with other kids' parents.

Ok, it sounds silly, but where do you go after college? I feel a little lost. I have a steady job, I'm in a decent location (central Florida, next to UF). But... I seem lost on where to go from here. I have vague, undefined goals: get into a Masters program, advance up the corporate ladder, save money (especially for retirement, but for all things in general). I guess what I am missing is the "social guide." When classes are in your past and your most exciting plan for the day is "work out for an hour and a half at the local gym"... how do you go about meeting new people? In college it was easy: you meet people at class, or in the dorms (I lived in dorms for almost 4 years, taking a break to live in a house for only a single summer with friends). Now that I am living by myself in a house with some students, I am kinda lost.

I'm wary of going out to bars to meet people; I have a somewhat unadventurous personality and always weigh the pros and cons of situations where I am sober, and going out to a bar, getting totally sloshed and making a lot of new friends seems it's out of my scope. What did you folks do after college (or high school, depending on circumstances, of course). How did you meet new people? Any hints or tips?

Note: I blame Jose Cuervo for any spelling mistakes of rambling. But I still wonder: how do you meet new people in a new place? It is worrisome. And while cruising for co-eds every weekend IS an option, I would prefer the non-Varus option (sorry buddy).

Edit: Not drunk enough to not correct my mistakes. Time to take shot number 5! Yes, it's due to a girl... darn it all.

Edited, Aug 8th 2009 11:15pm by LockeColeMA

Social networking sites.

Or pubs.

Well, the way I usually meet people is to climb as high as I can, take a deep breath, and bellow "I AM KAVEK" as loud as I can. I pick the most interesting people out of the crowd that inevitably* gathers to be my friends. It has yet to fail me.

Nevertheless, if you wish to try something else, you could always try joining some club or something. A book club, perhaps? Just so long as you don't get one full of old people (not there's anything wrong with that) it can be a good place to meet people, as those present are at least ostensibly literate, intelligent people. And as you're forced to talk to each other the ice is broken for you, no spine required. A book club is also a great place to start an argument, although there are better places for that e.g. France.

*Seriously, just try manufacturing a situation where this doesn't happen. You can't, can you? It's not even slightly evitable, you see.

Edited, Aug 9th 2009 4:23am by Kavekk

Start drinking heavily on Thursday, Friday, & Saturday nights. Being "older" now, you should fuck as many undergraduates as possible. If they're under 21, buying them booze is a sure fire way to hit it off with them.

At some point in the next 5-10 years you'll fuck the "right" girl, move in together, & move on with your life from there.

But again, for now, my advice is to simply fuck as much as possible.

You'll thank me later.

What do you like to do for fun? When you answer that, all you need to do is to figure out if there's a place where people gather to do that or at least to talk about doing it. If that fails, check out what people in your area get together to do. Hobbyist groups and whatnot sometimes hold events you can check out. Pick events that sound interesting and check em out. In either case, you'll find people to talk to with some common ground you can work from.

The final option I know of is to befriend people at work.

I stayed in touch with a lot of my school friends, but when I moved away from everything and everyone I knew 2 years ago I was in the same boat. I'm a fairly social person and needed to find people I could get along with, have common interests, and were local. I found a site that catered to one aspect of my life (being a mom) that was based in the local area and just started posting, paying attention to other members, and slowly building up friendships. I'd suggest either finding some clubs in your local area that interest you and trying them out, or looking for some local sites that you can post on and get to know people in your area. I've heard a lot of great stuff about meetup.com. I also post in my local area section of city-data.com and I know at least for my area they do meet ups once in awhile. Maybe you could check out your and see if it's as hopping? The only other thing I can think of is if you do game and have a close knit guild, see if any are in your area. When I lived in Mass, a few guildies lived nearby and we got together once in awhile.

It's definitely a different ballgame in making social connections outside of school. You dont have a bunch of people thrust in your direction, now you have to look. It's hard to first start out but I've found once you get your feet wet in trying, it becomes easier to put yourself out there and look for a decent friend or two.

Dont mind my rambling. I just woke up after a long night of adult toy parties with some of the ladies I met down here

also lots of areas have Gaming Clubs that meet to play board games. When my daughter moved to S.C. were she only know her boyfriend, he get her involved in a group of friends that meet once a week to play Settlers of Catan and she now has wide circle of friends down there.

Darn if Jonwin hadn't been so busy back in 1976 at Origins II, we could meet then. Though I would have been jail bait then, it didn't stop a crowd of guys from gathering around me in the dealers room, once they notice I was buying games for myself.

Find a good MMO to cyber in.

E-harmony.

Church groups.

Fake alcoholism and join AA.

Got a dog?....I hear they're good conversation starters - as are kids.

As someone else mentioned - try and maintain old friendships - actually follow through on "we'll have to get together sometime". Its also important to keep building new friendships. This gets harder as we age and become set in our ways. Any co-workers that you share likes or dislikes with - hobbies, music, or something?

Haha, when I was vacationing in MA my friends and I checked out craigslist personal ads. SOOOO many either obviously fake or actual prostitution ads. It was a little crazy!

Thank you everyone for the advice; I'll try to follow through on most of the, er, more serious suggestions soon. I feel a ton better after Saturday night!

Massively irrelevant to the rest of the thread, but did you guys ever meet Jack L. Chalker?