Work or leisure ?

Next week, there is going to be the fourth evening party held for PhD completion and/or departure in about 3 months. And people already start speaking about the upcoming department summer barbecue.

I can’t help but feel unmotivated by these. I only attended one of the parties already held lately. How social is one supposed to be? Am I already turning into a grumpy asocial professor?

I think my main issue is that I already feel like a lot of my evenings and weekends are eaten up by work. I haven’t seen some close friends and family in months even though they live less than 1.5 hours away (and The Long Stay abroad sort of puts a deadline for catching up with these people). So, no, I don’t feel super motivated to see people I already spend my days with, few of them being actual friends.

But I’m in an odd position in the way that although a lecturer, I’m still in the 95% confidence interval of PhD students age. They all seem to be super enthusiastic about such events, even though I’m sure they all have exciting social lives out of work. Some of them seem to expect the same reaction from me, and speaking about nights and weekends spent working would just make me look complainy.

Even then, they seem to consider these events as fun (and to be honest, they can be), but I can’t help but feel I’m just fulfilling some work duty.

There’s one such thing coming up on Monday and I still haven’t decided. The fact that that day seems to be a suitable day for going to see Sex and the City with a bunch of friends does not help, I’m afraid.