An Unbelievably Pleasant Social Gathering

A few weeks ago, there was a Berkeley AI social event. My natural reaction upon finding out about this was to ignore it, due to deeply unpleasant experiences in social gatherings before. Yet, I ended up going, due to two reasons. The first was that I had a terrible summer and was constantly in a bad mood, so I figured that even if I hated attending the social, my resulting mood couldn’t possibly be worse than what I was experiencing on a daily basis. The second reason why I attended was because John Canny said he would be going there, and he invited me to go with him. This would at least reduce the likelihood of the most common situation for me in social events: when I stand around awkwardly, watch other people talk without a clue as to what they are talking about, and then leave when my level of frustration exceeds a certain threshold.

Critically, John and I would be going together, not separately, so my plan was to stick with him until he either introduced me to someone, or until someone were to start a conversation with me. In the latter case, I would immediately switch to communicating with that person since John would have no trouble finding others to talk to. My goal for the AI social was to have at least one non-trivial conversation (ideally at least ten minutes) with someone (other than John), and leave with my mood at least as good as it was beforehand.

Well, fortune struck that afternoon. I had three (yes, three) such conversations! And I have an embarrassingly detailed recollection of how these conversations began, and what we talked about – often down to the exact words and sentences we said.

For the sake of privacy, I won’t go through all the details, but here is the high level story. When John and I went to the social event, there was already a huge crowd of faculty and students that I immediately became worried. Fortunately, there was a quieter room to the side that a few of us were in, and I was able to make my way over there. I saw Trevor (hey, can you tell me my prelim score already?) and a few other familiar folks. I had just started enjoying my cup of red wine when another student saw me and started a conversation, my first real one for that event. Fortunately, he spoke clearly, and the “side room” was sufficiently quiet.

I believe we had a nice conversation (I hope he liked it), and again, for the sake of privacy I won’t go through the details (but I can probably produce an accurate transcript of our conversation if needed). We reached a good stopping point, and then split up. I got some additional food and wine, and returned to the more crowded area. I was now by myself in a painfully familiar situation, and planned to remain only briefly.

But I got lucky – someone was walking back to work, and saw me along the way¹ so we ended up talking. Again, this was another person who I knew somewhat well, and his voice is easy to understand. Our conversation was also pretty nice. We discussed the prelims and his plans for the next few years.

Then he had to leave. I stood around by the now-empty plate of food, and was getting ready to head out when I got lucky again: a student who I had seen before was walking towards me and had made eye contact. Yay! I did not know him as much as the two earlier students, so our conversation veered towards standard “introductory” material.

By the time we finished, most of the other students and faculty had left to go back to work (or home, because it was Friday evening), so I figured I would do the same.

But wow, that event was something I will definitely remember for a while. I felt so deliriously happy after the social, that it actually ended up a net negative on my work progress for the rest of that evening, because I kept thinking about the social rather than my work! (Don’t get me wrong – this was the rare case when I was happy not to get work done.) If others knew how much I obsess over almost trivial conversations, how I have a near-transcript level of conversation recollection, and how often I replay social situations in my head, they would probably be shocked.

So should I try attending social events more often? Maybe. Actually, one of my concerns is if I set expectations that are too high for future social events. I guess that’s not the worst thing worry about, though.