To Party or Not To Party

Well, that’s actually NOT the question. For those of you that know me, which I assume is each and every reader, that’s NEVER a question for me. At least not as long as I’m in my mid-20’s and have some semblance of energy remaining. Lately, the question has been: WHO to party with. I’ve been back in LA for almost two months now, and have pretty much exclusively been partying with my South Asian friends – Anuj, Smitty, Vijay, etc. – the non-Andersonians I mentioned in a previous posting.

Now, enter, the Anderson friends. So far, most of my social outings with my classmates have been during the week – happy-hour type events that people organize and discuss at school. While I've yet to form a “core” group of people that I actually call to go out and do stuff, I’ve made a few friends who I do keep in contact with on evenings/weekends when we’re not on campus (this really applies more to weekends than evenings, as despite my 8am classes, I find myself on campus til at least 6 or 7 on most days).

Now, it’s Friday evening, and I’ve spent most of the last few hours ignoring my Managerial Economics textbook, instead trying to figure out where to go tonight and with whom (or is it “with who? Shashank, help me out here). One of my Anderson friends called me a few hours ago mentioning a house party being thrown by a classmate. Advantages: I get to meet and hang out with some of my classmates that I don’t know that well, and house parties are significantly cheaper than most Friday night options. Disadvantages: I drink a lot more heavily on Fridays than I do during the week, and most of these people have yet to see “drunk Yat” just yet. And I’d kinda like to keep it that way.

Of course, the non-Andersonians are making their own plans, with a couple options being discussed by varying groups of people. Of course, the advantages of hanging out with these “existing friends’ (to mix up the terminology a bit) are a bit more obvious – I’ve known most of these people for ages, and they’ve all seen drunk Yat thousands of times. More importantly, they drink just as heavily as me, so even if I do something out-of-the-ordinary stupid, they probably won’t remember it. Plus, when I DON’T hang out with them, I inevitably get the “you’ve known us forever and now you’re ditching us for new people” and “why can’t you hang out with all of us together?” comments, even though I’m sure most of the non-Andersonians would get scared away by the large groups of non-Indos that constitute most of the b. school social events.

My big concern is that if I regularly say “no” to the Andersonians in these early days, they’ll obviously stop calling and inviting me out. That said, I’m highly tempted to go to the house party tonight. Or, ideally, go to the house party for like an hour, show that I want to meet and hang out with my classmates, and then head out with the non-Andersonians. Unfortunately, the non-Andersonians usually consist of about 8 dudes for every non-dude, so we always have to go places earlier, thus ruling out that option.

Final verdict: I’m gonna hang out with the Indos tonight. But I’m gonna call the Andersonians beforehand, mention where I’m going (and probably lie and make it sound like some I-have-to-go birthday party – J/K to any classmates that might be reading this :-) and invite them, and ask what they’re all doing tomorrow night. Business is all about negotiation, right?

DISCLAIMER: I know this posting had a very “Hey! Look at me! I’m Mr. Popular” feel to it. Definitely NOT how I intended it. To prove this, I’m more than willing to admit that I ran for not one, but two elected positions within my section at Anderson, and lost BOTH. Clearly, I’m not Mr. Popular.