Erasmus social pressure

The fun and games of being a Erasmus student...

By Lucie Le Moine

16/02/10, All rights reserved'

Eldon tonight?”. As an Erasmus student, I hear this question at least once a week, just before the ritual gathering of any self-respecting international students in Leeds: the Eldon Pub on Tuesday night. Cheap beer, crowded pub; what kind of place could be better to meet people from everywhere in the world (and even sometimes from England)? But socializing, being friendly and welcoming demand energy, and, as the pub closes at 1am and people arrive around 10pm, you have to be quite efficient and full of good will, which leads to this kind of situation: “Let’s first drink a beer, after we can try to engage in conversation with this group of people, they seem to be nice”. You indeed need to be self-confident to launch, for the fifth time of the night, this basic standardized conversation: “Hi![very enthusiast one] Where are you from? [big smile]”, “What do you study? [interested facial expression]”, “Do you enjoy Leeds so far?”, and to answer, for the fifth time of the night, these same questions.

After a few (unsuccessful) attempts, I realised that the best moments of these evenings were, for me,  cigarette-breaks. You can enjoy cold and calm surroundings and as soon as your precious cigarette is over,  it’s time to go back to the suffocating atmosphere inside. You find yourself confused as to why you came in the first place, as evenings of “international friendship” become a succession of attempts of convincing your (more sociable) friends that it would be more fun to go to another place, less busy (“You know, this nice quiet pub…”).

Of course I’m sure that a lot of people feel really comfortable with these kind of social activities and sincerely like it, but I also think that for some other people, such conversations and places are voluntary, self imposed nightmares. Why do we continue to put ourselves through this pain? To respond to the social pressure, which requires you to be friendly and sociable, during your Erasmus year  (“That’s an amazing way to meet people from everywhere!”), or more generally, during your degree at  university (“University is the place to meet your friends for life! To extend your network!”). And then, social networks on the Internet allow you to show everyone, consciously or unconsciously,  how great your term is. Your year can be ‘Facebook notified’!

But, if you don’t belong to the category of people who are able to talk with everyone about everything (how do they do that?), you can always count on your “bridge friend”, the one who introduces you to some new people, who, in being even more cynical, actually serves as a kind of filter, and eventually allows you to take pleasure in acting as an anti-social person. Unfortunately, my “bridge friend” left at the end of the first semester. How can one maintain a proper social life then? Social pressure, you tire me!