I like writing letters/emails more than chatting/skyping
 

.

i reached out via facebook to a member of my extended family who's a very accomplished academic type. she holds a really high position in an engineering department of a top 10 engineering school. MIT alumnus. helped design components on the space shuttle. she's apparently really cool and liberal and all that.

but she immediately suggested talking on skype, which i've never really done because it's just weird and i have body image problems. plus prefer the time that allows me to be pensive and get my grammar all perfect when writing a letter or email (or messageboard post). plus i think i'm very dull-witted in casual conversation. i feel like i'm a very boring person to talk to.

plus there is an added anxiety of talking with someone who, by the time she was my age, earned her Sc. D from MIT (their equivalent of a Ph.D.). I'm just now entering the third year of my undergrad (and it's taken me 4 years to get there). i'd much prefer to correspond via letter so i can at least obfuscate the fact that i'm an overly ambitious loser attending a state university. but she wants to skype.

she just wants to see your dick. relax

nah.. i used to be the same way. but then i noticed my letters sort of ramble... i know i can't talk to other people like i can here. i don't know if people understand my demeanor through my "web vernacular" if you can call it that. and like i said i kind of ramble, and i don't know if somebody really wants to have that kind of correspondence where they;'re responding to paragraphs upon paragraphs. though sometimes they do

so usually i skype. but in your situation i'd be more comfortable with emailing too

I can relate. I have fairly high level writing skills and always feel that I can articulate my meaning much clearer and more concisely in written word. Weirdly enough, I actually don't have trouble talking to people in person, but mediums in between these things, such as talking on the phone or skyping, are very uncomfortable for me. I'm not sure what I would do if I had to do a professional interview over skype or something. that's just so weird to me.

i get what you mean about the rambling thing.

something also happened this past summer where an old friend/bandmate sent me an email and i took a week to reply. i specifically waited a week so i could set the tempo for subsequent replies. but then he replied almost immediately with a wall of text, sent at 6 am no less, and i just put it on the back burner indefinitely because i don't need that kind of pressure in my life.

i feel so fucking neurotic sometimes.

I also do that.... I will wait awhile after receiving an email to send a reply if it's someone who I don't want to have the expectation of regular contact with.

Unfortunately, most people prefer to talk rather than write. A lot of people have much poorer writing/reading skills than verbal communication skills. How often have you sent someone an email with three questions and the response is like, "Here's an answer to only the first thing you asked, have a nice day!" I have to assume that is the product of just being bad at communicating through written word.

it happens quite often. i always try to address every point in emails from other people, but it's not aways reciprocated. drives me nuts.

does she realize that she designed components for something that blew up twice, bankrupted NASA and set the US space program back several decades?

not to mention that it was 60s era technology cobbled together during the Nixon administration?

I wouldn't trust that broad!

Sally Ride thanks her for her accomplishments!

shut the fuck up scotty.

i mean

do you know how many components there are on the space shuttle.

it's a lot.

i'll give you a hint as to what part she helped design. it wasn't the o-ring, and it wasn't the fuel tank. so really, get fucked you goddamn idiot.

no one care

for what purpose did you reach out to her? if it's just to get to know her and make a connection and shoot the shit... then just be yourself or whatever cliche shit you wanna insert there. i'm sure she's happy to have someone related to her, however distantly, who respects her and wanted to reach out.

i doubt skype awkwardness would be a problem. probably expected for people who don't really know each other.

Scotty:

I usually feel for you cause people have the tendency to "shut-the-fuck-up-scotty" you for no reason, but you don't have to be a dick

write me a letter john, any of you. [email protected]

http://personal.benjaminbeck.com/wp-...-capture-3.png


right out of the blue she sends me a john deere letter

are you starting to discover why people are mean to him

IT BLEW UP TWICE

THIS CRAZY EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT THAT GOES

INTO SPACE AND BACK TO EARTH

BLEW UP TWICE

OVER THE LAST WHAT WAS IT 30 GODDAMN YEARS

true

i deserve it

because America stopped dreaming big and settled for mediocrity

I have a longtime internet friend who I exchange emails with at about the rate of 1 per week (4 emails total back and forth per month, tops). Sometimes one of us doesn't respond for a month or two.

I'm not a big fan of video chatting either and would be super uncomfortable skyping with someone I didn't know.

I get it and in this case he was being a dick for no reason, but more often than not he gets harassed for saying completely innocuous things. there are people who are bigger dicks who no one bothers to contend with. it has to do with this cliquey thing here that people always wanna argue doesn't exist

i;m in the big dick clique

well the shut the fuck up scotty is, on my end, a modified lebowski meme

he's just the donny of this board, he is like a child that wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know

i've been thinking about it and i'm realizing my anxieties are mostly in my head. it's mostly rooted in the fact that i'm almost thirty without a bachelor's degree and fucked off in a call center job for much of my twenties.

i had been meaning to reach out to here because she is literally the only other STEM type person I know of in my family so I thought that'd be cool. I chose that moment because the university she works at was in the national news recently and i thought i'd send her a message. I'd guess if you were one of two lawyers in your entire family, you might reach out to them for a similar reason.

I'm happy to have coined the stfu scotty meme.