Something a friend from uni told me last week over coffee got me thinking,
“ We Iranians don’t need alcohol to have fun”
In contrast, here in the Netherlands, drinking is at the core of social activity inside and outside the university. Monthly staff meeting? Drinks afterwards. Outing with your research group? Drinking in a bar. The whole point of conferences? Drinking until late for the sake of networking. I say all this at the risk of sounding hypocritical: I’ve enthusiastically partaken in this cultural ritual for much of my adult life. I do see why this is so prevalent: alcohol is social glue, it’s a great way to loosen up with new people, and going to a bar with the group is more convenient and accessible than an organised outing with fixed start and end times. Personally, I’ve had various reasons for drinking, not all of them admittedly the best ones: unwinding after a stressful day, celebrations, avoiding being out-shouted by my mostly male, loud-voiced friends, going out because it seems like the only opportunity to get my much-needed social contact.
The past few months I’ve started drinking less and less because of a variety of reasons, not necessarily because some of my reasons to drink are bad. As you can imagine, skipping out on alcohol complicates things: social drinks get significantly more stressful to me as people get louder. I go home early or don’t participate at all, then end up losing opportunities to connect with people and eventually find myself feeling lonely. Nevertheless, my life started to change for the better. I realised that I can find friends that share the hobbies that will always be a part of my life, like going to the gym. Not drinking leaves me with a lot more time on my hands, which I can now use to stay at the gym longer and spend time with friends there to make up for lost social contact. Win win, right?
Now, university. I like my colleagues, and I love the international and diverse community we have at our department, but how can I keep connecting with these people without adhering to the drinking rituals? Other group members share this feeling, too, but we’re not in the majority. And there’s the minor thing of: What will we do instead?
Coming back to what my friend said: there are enough cultures where alcohol is not as prevalent, where having fun without drinks comes naturally. I’m dreaming of a way to avoid having to compromise social contact and personal values like that. Maybe we should do what they do. Whatever their trade secret is.
Let’s be straight. Maybe I should think of it as just that: a dream. The drinking culture is not something the majority of us here think is worth the effort to change. Drinking much less might have improved my quality of life, but this will not be true for everyone. It’s neither productive to try to change the ingrained culture nor to persuade my friends to suddenly find something else than drinking.
So, what will we do instead? I don’t know about our research group, and that’s okay. There will never be a way to please everyone. That doesn’t mean I have to give up on what I need, though. I can find people that are like-minded. People that are frustrated about the lack of alcohol-free activities. And then, discuss our problematic dependence on coffee, or something?
February 19, 2023
EssaysThe impostor syndrome - every PhD student gets it at some point, or so I’m told. For me, it’s hard to disentangle from my own perfectionism: I’m tempted to think whatever I do is not good enough, regardless of how good I think I am at something compared to other people.
April 2, 2023
EssaysLast weekend the clock went one hour back: a nasty surprise. I was already going to bed on the late side before my gym session the next day. Switching to summer time meant another hour would be taken off my night. In the end, it messed up my sleep for an entire week.
