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[frogfactory]

I have no idea where people you find friends, if not at work.  Since leaving undergrad, all the close friends I've made have been lab-mates from various places I've worked or studied.

[merce]

A couple of comments:

1.
I sat next to a businessman on the plane today and when he heard I'm a prof he made a few observations, one of which was that academics are clique-like and only hanging out amongst themselves.  The way he put it made it seem like something everyone knows. Hmmm.

2.
I worked in a country where the faculty consistently commented on the fact that Americans are weird because they have coffee with their coworkers and even go to each other's houses and befriend them.  In their culture, they claimed, it was unthinkable.  The idea of being friends with someone you worked with was difficult to comprehend for them.  It is hard to think of being close to people who have very different lifestyles than mine. Maybe that's because I'm not from metropolitan areas and don't live in one now.


3. an anecodote
I remember a story of one grad friend "helping" another sleep the night before her exams by giving her two horse tranquilizers (hoping she would sleep through her first day of prelims I believe). 
That is an example of the type of danger you could get into in grad school with your fellow students.

[lurkergirl]

I am still puzzled by what you mean when you say someone prioritized a relationship over the friendship -- why would the two be incompatible?

[pink_]

I am still puzzled by what you mean when you say someone prioritized a relationship over the friendship -- why would the two be incompatible?

For this, you need to read the LHC.  There Merce told about a work-friend who said she was interested in a guy merce was seeing.

[merce]

I am still puzzled by what you mean when you say someone prioritized a relationship over the friendship -- why would the two be incompatible?

For this, you need to read the LHC.  There Merce told about a work-friend who said she was interested in a guy merce was seeing.

& this happened TWICE-- once last semester and just recently.
(But I don't want this thread to limit itself to that sort of issue but to be about the question in its most general form)

[buglet]

As Spork says, it depends.   I still keep in touch with a few colleagues where I've worked in the past, and a couple still are close friends.  I've been betrayed by a work friend who knifed me in the back for her own benefit as well.

I think sometimes, particularly if folks are on the TT in a geographically isolated area, it is difficult to make friends outside of work.  Especially true if they are single.  I knew one single colleague who had as his policy..."no friends from work."  He was cordial and was outside all the petty politics, but I also know that he spent most of his holidays by himself and was pretty lonely.  In his paranoia about work and personal life intersecting, he just had no personal life.

Perhaps best to become friends with people in different areas of the school who are unlikely to affect your day-to-day worklife.  Doesn't seem that dangerous to befriend someone in the biology department when you are in history, especially at a bigger school.

[lurkergirl]

I am in my first year on the TT and I am definitely doing everything I can to befriend colleagues -- and especially trying to do so outside of my department, such as with other faculty who have been hired within the past few years. It's only been a few months so I can't really say what will happen, but I have colleagues I genuinely like and enjoy spending time with. I do try my best to not comment on campus politics or say things that I wouldn't want to come back to me, but that would be an issue in any workplace. As titania alluded to, one shouldn't confide things that one would want kept away from a tenure committee.

As far as specifics such as people going after one's partner, I think that is relatively independent of it being a work acquaintances. The only thing is that with work friends you have to keep seeing them once they are ex-friends!

What is a friend? Is it someone to watch your favorite TV shows with? Go on walks together? Have dinners together? Explore aspects of the city? Go to a concert together? Have coffee or drinks? There's different degrees of friendship and it takes work to move it beyond on-campus coffees, but I think it can be worth it.

[pollinate]

Yes, it can be very dangerous if they aren't able to truly be friends back.  I'm "friendly" in only a very superficial fashion with several people because any real information they get is likely to be used against me.  The worst part is that they're able to be such charmers that it took several repetitions before that finally sank in.  And, don't even think about trying to convince someone who has never been on the receiving end of their self-serving malice that they could ever do such a thing.  Your word against theirs, and all of that.

[mukimali]

In my graduate school, I received a booklet about American culture from the International office that said something like; If a fellow student tells you "let's get together for lunch", they do not really mean it, it is only a polite way to say goodbye.
And here I was waiting for a call...

[concordancia]

In my graduate school, I received a booklet about American culture from the International office that said something like; If a fellow student tells you "let's get together for lunch", they do not really mean it, it is only a polite way to say goodbye.
And here I was waiting for a call...

Wish someone had handed me that handbook.

~Concordancia, born American to American parents, themselves born to American parents and still disappointed if people don't really mean it.

[merce]

In my graduate school, I received a booklet about American culture from the International office that said something like; If a fellow student tells you "let's get together for lunch", they do not really mean it, it is only a polite way to say goodbye.
And here I was waiting for a call...

Ha! You might have gone to my grad school which handed out just such a booklet.

[alleyoxenfree]

In my graduate school, I received a booklet about American culture from the International office that said something like; If a fellow student tells you "let's get together for lunch", they do not really mean it, it is only a polite way to say goodbye.
And here I was waiting for a call...

Wish someone had handed me that handbook.

~Concordancia, born American to American parents, themselves born to American parents and still disappointed if people don't really mean it.

Me too!  Convinced I have adult Asperger's.

[gollum]

Be friendly.

Don't be friends.

I think this comment puts it in a nutshell.

For non-tenured folks, befriending tenured colleagues is fraught with peril.  In my case, I socialized with senior colleagues on weekends because we all lived in the same town, my wife and I were new to town, and so these colleagues were an easy source of friends.  So we went to movies and dinner together, had barbecues, parties, watered each other's plants when the other was away, helped each other move, etc.  I let my hair down, so to speak.  Little did I realize I was still being evaluated during these social occasions, off the clock.  I was naive.

While socializing with colleagues, I was perceived as a different person than I was at work.  This led my "friends" to conclude that because I didn't appear as happy at work as I did on my off hours, that meant I hated teaching and service.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Bottom line: colleagues are NOT your friends.

Gollum

[kedves]

Be friendly.

Don't be friends.

I think this comment puts it in a nutshell.

For non-tenured folks, befriending tenured colleagues is fraught with peril.  In my case, I socialized with senior colleagues on weekends because we all lived in the same town, my wife and I were new to town, and so these colleagues were an easy source of friends.  So we went to movies and dinner together, had barbecues, parties, watered each other's plants when the other was away, helped each other move, etc.  I let my hair down, so to speak.  Little did I realize I was still being evaluated during these social occasions, off the clock.  I was naive.

While socializing with colleagues, I was perceived as a different person than I was at work.  This led my "friends" to conclude that because I didn't appear as happy at work as I did on my off hours, that meant I hated teaching and service.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Bottom line: colleagues are NOT your friends.

Gollum

I agree with that.  There is also the possibility that if you reveal that you have a life outside of work and possibly family (but not too much emphasis on family), you will seem odd or not-serious-enough to people who are more focused on work.

[tolerantly]

Merce, just stay sensitive to the fact that you are not equals and that the tenured and t-t folks are acutely aware of that every time they see you. You may not care, but odds are they do. And understand that any friendship will have to stay within those bounds.

I'm not a professor. I live in a small town, I still take some classes, and I'm old and university-ridden enough that I'm friends with professors and staff, not students. However, even there, there are limits. From my perspective, there's no difference between professors and staff; they're both university employees, and like as not my staff friends have advanced degrees. However, I know perfectly well that from their POV, fac and staff live on different planets, there are real status differences, and the status divisions within fac & staff are consequential socially too. The profs are also exceptionally constrained in how they may behave, because the politics are stupid and vicious, and are nonstop, and appearances count; staff less so, but only because my staff friends tend not to be high up in admin & unambitious there. Again, from my POV this all looks nuts, and they look like they're wearing straitjackets. But it'd be foolish not to understand that career considerations are going to govern their behavior with me, just as they govern the rest of their lives.

You can count on them to look after themselves. People don't last very long in academia if they can't do that. If you can have pleasant friendships within those bounds, do, but don't expect more.

Oh. I should say that I'm friends with exactly no big movers and shakers at the university. Acquainted, yes, but that's all. I don't think it's any accident that these acquaintances haven't developed into anything more; I'm of no use to them, and they've only got so much time.