I'm down with small talk but I have a hard time relating to a lot of my co-workers. My co-workers at my previous job - we could talk anything and we did: politics, movies, smoking weed, drinking, etc. The co-workers I have now spend most of their conversation talking about their wives (or husbands), their children, and one upping each other in the rat race. I feel out of place and personal relationships with them suffered badly as a result (although work relationships are tight). It feels weird being an asocial outcast because you get all paranoid and shit, wondering what they might think of you. However inside of the company, I'm doing better than I ever have before, which is weird.
Engineering was completely dull: 70% of conversations revolved around classes and their grades specifically. A 90% was considered "not horrible" but implied that that you were reaching that point of being horrible. The other 30% of conversations were about internships: what they did last summer, what they are going to do next summer, and what they might do next summer if they don't have one already. Most engineers I knew were apolitical but were often conservative. I was one of the few atheist socialist engineers in my program.
I like posting on the forums but it is a separate world. I like to keep them worlds separate in regards to friends, family, work, and internet forums. Each one is its own thing. I find this works the best because of past instances of drama (that did not affect me) when they would occasionally spill into one another.
