Taibros.net

So I’ve had numerous conversations about this, but I have yet to post about it:

One “issue” our fellowship has been facing is that its harder to get the younger classes to hang out with each other outside of fellowship. While some may point at this and say it is a failing of unity or integration within our fellowship, I would like to propose an alternative position: I think its because in-coming classes are getting more socially adept every year. Namely, they are getting cooler.

Some people reminisce about the times when ACFers would live together, eat together, do everything together - the good old days of intimate fellowship. And then they’d complain about how none of that happens anymore, and people are more into their own hobbies/pastimes/circle of friends.

Now I’m not trying to bash anyone, but I think its cuz older generations were geekier than younger ones.

CMU has been known for its selectivity for real nerds and hardcore geeks (bonus points if you can recite more than 20 digits of PI). However, lately they have been practicing a sort of “social” affirmative action. As my friend James Tseng pointed out when he visited two years after graduating: “Whoa! Where’d all the cute girls come from?!?”

What I’m saying is that the younger generations are now more talented, more intelligent, and yes, even cooler and more sociable (extroverted, friendly, etc) than current generations. Older generations, myself included, were dorkier, played starcraft all the time, and never really got too many friends. I myself have only a handful of friends outside ACF. So when the older generation joined the fellowship, they really immersed themselves in the community and the family, and developed very tight, albeit isolated, social networks. This is what people reminisced about.

Newer gens now have the skills to get their own friends, and don’t require clubs-of-mutual-interests to foster it for them. Thats why we see more freshman involved with other groups and clubs and activities. While it is tough on a fellowship that lacks a tight cohesion and conflicts of interest can arise, I also think that it is the natural course of aggregate personalities. It is inevitable with the way CMU recruits nowadays (you could probably get in by sending in an attractive picture of yourself), so why should it be an issue of complaint?

As a body of believers, you need to understand what your body is made up of, and accomodate accordingly. A lot has changed since I first went to ACF, and I feel like an old geezer now(freshmen no longer know who Doogie Howser is); but in the end it is the people in the fellowship who make up the fellowship, and thats what you need to focus on.