A tale of friendship, thermite, acid, and... spiders?!

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Good day y'all,

So, today I'll tell you how I was able to successfully learn social skills and make friends. Come on, get yourself a comfy chair, as this might take you a while to read. (This will likely take ages to type, as I often mix up the sequence of letters in a word when typing. If you think that's bad, my handwriting is even worse, but that's a tale for another day...)

To be totally honest, I was very bad at social skills throughout my entire childhood. However, unlike many of you around here, I didn't mind being around other people, as long as everyone was doing something. The thing that I didn't like much was parties! I simply got confused trying to understand what was going on there, and doing anything that gets you confused all the time isn't very enjoyable. It didn't help either that (to this day) I don't like any beverage other than water and the only beverages readily available were pop, juice, and sometimes milk. Same with the food; I am one of the very few people who doesn't enjoy sweet food much, and would go for something salty any day (thanks for nothing for offering cake and candy!). In those days, I was best able to get along with adults, who for some reason were easier to understand.

Somehow, however, I must have improved over those years, as by the time I was 12, and doing a grade 9 science class in French (I had been educated at home until grade 12), I somehow became one of the most popular students in that class. Maybe it was because of my ability, as I never had a problem understanding things through ration and reasoning (that's still how I learn today), but I must've been able to handle the social skills adequately too. I didn't go out and try to make friends however, as I didn't think I was ready for that.

By the time I entered high school (again, I didn't do many courses there, but whatever), I kept on improving. Sometimes I would choose to eat lunch with my classmates, and sometimes I would prefer to eat lunch alone -- it depended on the day. In fact, I got a few friendship requests, but I refused to accept them, as I still didn't know whether or not doing such a thing was a good idea.

Some of the greatest changes, however, occurred as I entered university. From the beginning, I never had any problem or hesitation speaking to professors, and, for some reason, many of them seemed to think I was interesting too. Perhaps it was because I did well, or showed no fear. In fact, I continue to speak of many of my professors on a regular basis, even those that I had back in first year (I'm in third year now), and, in the three years I've spent at university, I've come to personally meet at least half of the entire chemistry department. I also never hesitated to speak my mind in a lecture hall of over 300, and getting along with the TA's and the other students in the lab wasn't really much of a challenge anymore.

Socially, however, the years in which the largest changes occurred were the fall of 2015 until the present day. It started in the fall of 2015, second year university, with my re-meeting of somebody whom I knew back from a science camp. He was a theoretical chemistry graduate student, as well as the temporary laboratory instructor for first year chemistry. The next participant was the analytical chemistry lab instructor, who was supposedly one of the toughest, angriest professors in the department. The final player was the organic chemistry lab instructor, who I knew next to nothing about. I was spending increasing amounts of time at the university, especially at the chemistry department, and started thinking to myself "I'd like to have someone here I can really trust, and to whom I can tell anything." Although I didn't know it at the time, it was the beginning of a three way race.

In the beginning, the winner appeared to the grad student. The two of us had known one another for a while before, and both of us enjoyed many of the similar things. The analytical prof initially came off as a bit unsympathetic (not surprised there), and the organic prof... well, she was so kind that I was a bit afraid of her!

Throughout that fall, relations with the grad student continued to improve, and he became my closest acquaintance. I didn't give up on the analytical prof however, and after being touched on the shoulder by her following a major software problem with the gas chromatograph (which initially scared the heck out of me), I decided that there was nothing to fear from her either, and I began to seriously like her company too. The organic prof was a distant third player at this time.

The positions of the three players continued unchanged until early February of 2016. I had found something which I thought was "gold" on a piece of quartz, and asked various members of the department what the sample was. After getting various inconclusive responses, I decided to take the sample into the organic lab and do some tests. I asked the prof if it was OK for me to test this with sulfuric acid, and she suggested to start with 20%. That didn't do much, which wasn't unexpected, as the sample had already passed the 35% HCl acid test at home. When I notched up the concentration to 98% (gold wouldn't react with that), the sample began to get warm, and gave off a bit of steam. A few seconds later, I saw about half a dozen or so spiders floating on the surface of the acid -- or, more accurately, the carbonized corpses of spiders. The prof couldn't believe her eyes and I couldn't either. (I don't kill spiders usually)

At around the same time, I performed a mini-thermite reaction (don't try this yourself. Ever!) and sent it to all three amigos. All of them enjoyed it very much, and by March of 2016, relations were back to a three way tie.

When it came time to find work for the summer, I applied for work with a prof who works in electrochemistry. To increase my chances of being hired, I asked three people -- another grad student I worked for, the analytical prof, and the organic prof. For some inexplicable reason, the organic prof revealed her mobile number to me. I ended up getting hired in the electrochem lab, and also applied for a teaching assistant position in the organic lab around the same time, partly because I wanted to give back some of the knowledge I had acquired, partly because I thought it would be good experience down the road. Sadly, however, the analytical chem prof announced she was retiring in August, and I found that a bit saddening, as I had grown to like her a lot.

In June of 2016 I volunteered at the CSC conference (which was amazing, by the way) at a check-in desk. The first day was busy, and it was fun, as I was together with many of my lab-mates I had worked with in the summer of 2015. The second day started out fine, but by late in the afternoon, there weren't many talks going on anymore, and I had run out of things to talk about with the other volunteers at the desk. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to send the organic prof a text message. I don't know what I was thinking or expecting at the time, but I did end up getting a reply! And that was the unofficial beginning of a true friendship.

The organic prof left for vacation for a while in the summer, during which time we exchanged occasional messages. By the fall of 2016, the two of us had grown to like one another significantly, and I worked as a TA in her lab. What sealed the deal, however, was a message sent in early November, where the prof revealed that she (just like me) had problems with working memory and coordination. Further conversations revealed that the two of us were more similar in more ways than I had ever imagined, and that really the only major difference was that she was more socially adept than I was. Declaring friendship, however, was another matter. While she'd already declared back in early October, it was not until early November that I did the same, and late November that I said it in person. Trouble is, declaring friendship in person was a bit more than I was capable of at the time, and I became extremely stressed for the next day or so. However, a quick hug solved that problem entirely.

These days, I think that I have learned all the tactics necessary in order to make friends, and to get along with people. The main challenge now is not that I lack the skills, but that I can't think quickly enough to apply them every time. Yet I thoroughly enjoy this precisely because it is challenging; I have always been up for a challenge throughout my entire life. Talking to one person at a time is easy, and it remains so until the group size approaches 10 or so, and the one big group breaks up into multiple "groups" all talking about different things (although, if the room is large enough, groups of up to 30 or so are possible). That gets confusing largely because I can't keep track of all the conversations at once; all the sounds get blended into very loud background noise and it makes it really hard to follow what's going on. I still don't too well with nonverbal cues, but I usually have a basic familiarity of whether what I'm saying is actually interesting whoever's listening to it, and I don't mind talking about a variety of different topics.

By the way, I did the AQ test last night, and got a score of 23.

Interesting narrative, good luck on your next challenge.