As a grad student, how much of your free time (ex. Friday evening) do you spend socializing with people in your program vs. with friends from other areas of your life? Did you ever feel like you had to choose between these and, if so, how did you find a balance?
My motivation for asking: I'm a first year grad student in a program that prides itself on the cohort all being friends. In addition to being in classes and doing homework together all week, we have a lot of social events outside of school. This is nice in theory, but I've found that it's really not that healthy in practice (instead of doing something actually fun we're complaining and stressing about the same issues over the weekend); however, I'm struggling with feeling like I don't have close friends in the program because I'm not around as much and there seems to be a very high expectation here. I think part of it is that a lot of people moved to be in the program and so don't know many people outside of the program.
I'd love to hear about your experience with this in general and any advice on my particular situation is appreciated too :D.
