Hi, I'm new to this forum

[Stephαnie]

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I am currently a first-year PhD student in English Literature at UBC. My life right now is basically seminars, papers, reading, presentations, bibliographies, yoga, dancing, walking around and enjoying the beautiful city of Vancouver. I'm lucky to be living in such a lovely place, to have the chance to pursue higher education, and to not have to worry about money for the next few years.

 

I am, however, looking for something more, which is why I decided to make an account here. I'm approaching my mid-twenties now and very much aware that with each passing month I am only going to get older. I am at the prime dating time of my life, but I'm just not meeting anybody I like because my day-to-day life is so filled. I have lots of friends and acquaintances, but many of them are at a transient or uncertain period in their life now. There doesn't seem to be anyone on the same page as me in terms of life-goals.

 

My parents are immigrants, so I have to build my local connections almost entirely on my own. I also don't have a religious affiliation, which means I'm missing out on a lot of networking that happens at religious gatherings. I would identify myself as a Third Culture Individual, my three cultures being China (where my parents are from), Singapore (where I spent the first part of my youth), and North America-- Canada a bit more than the States (where I spent the latter part of my youth). In terms of citizenship I am American by birthright, but looking to obtain Canadian citizenship soon because I enjoy living in Canada more.

 

I speak perfect North American English, and am also fluent in Mandarin, meaning I don't have to translate in my head before I speak. I am however a bit stronger in English than I am in Mandarin. I also speak a little bit of French, but not fluently, and am open to learning other languages. I pick up languages quite easily.

 

I'm looking for someone who:

- is also in Vancouver and planning on living here for the next few years

- is either in academia or sympathetic to academia, and who ideally has at least a master's degree

- ideally comes from a different discipline, so we can have more dynamic conversations

- is of a totally different ethnicity than me. This is important to me because I want to have mixed-race children for personal, political, and philosophical reasons.

- is open to starting a family together in the future, in about 8 years or so

- is attentive, warm, thoughtful, hopeful, and kind

- has a good life of his own and isn't looking for someone to "complete" him or whatever, but rather someone to share life's adventures with

- has travelled extensively, read extensively, and has a broad, open worldview. Appreciative of the beauty of diverse languages, religions and cultures.

- communicates candidly and enjoys talking about a variety of topics

- holds a passionate, celebratory, exploratory attitude toward life

- is healthy. Close to average height (5'8'' or so?) and average build (neither too macho/big nor too weak/skinny) is best.

 

Language and religion does not matter at all to me. I'm willing to learn Hindi or Urdu or whatever the case may be, and possibly even convert to a religion if I like you enough, as long as you practice a contemporary, relatively open-minded form of religion, and are willing to learn about my cultural backgrounds too.

 

Please let me know if this is off-topic for this forum, and where I should go. I've tried places like OKCupid and Plentyoffish but they give me too many irrelevant matches. Coffee Meets Bagel would be much closer to what I'm looking for, but it's not available in Vancouver yet.

 

Thank you   Also, feel free to ask me any questions about UBC, Vancouver or whatever. I'm happy to help. If you want to friend me on Facebook, please send me a message first to introduce yourself.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Stephαnie

[St Andrews Lynx]

Please be aware that GradCafe is not a dating site, it's a site primarily for discussing grad school admissions and life in grad school. 

 

Maybe Meetup would be more appropriate to your needs: it allows you to join interest groups (hiking, book clubs, French literature appreciation, single professionals) and meet new people at the meet-ups.  Although not everybody single who attends these Meetups is looking for a relationship.

[aberrant]

Please be aware that GradCafe is not a dating site, it's a site primarily for discussing grad school admissions and life in grad school. 

 

Maybe Meetup would be more appropriate to your needs: it allows you to join interest groups (hiking, book clubs, French literature appreciation, single professionals) and meet new people at the meet-ups.  Although not everybody single who attends these Meetups is looking for a relationship.

 

I somehow felt like she's trolling here...

[fuzzylogician]

I somehow felt like she's trolling here...

 

Maybe I'm naive but I don't believe that everyone who does something I don't understand or says something that I disagree with or that's plain wrong or unpleasant is necessarily a troll. 

 

But yes, this board is not a dating service, it has a very different purpose.

[Stephαnie]

Please be aware that GradCafe is not a dating site, it's a site primarily for discussing grad school admissions and life in grad school. 

 

Maybe Meetup would be more appropriate to your needs: it allows you to join interest groups (hiking, book clubs, French literature appreciation, single professionals) and meet new people at the meet-ups.  Although not everybody single who attends these Meetups is looking for a relationship.

 

Thank you.   I hadn't heard of Meetup before. I will take a look.

 

Sorry for being off-topic, I just thought that since this is a gathering-place for everyone who is thinking about attending or already attending graduate school, there might be a more relevant group of young people I could try to connect with.

[aberrant]

Maybe I'm naive but I don't believe that everyone who does something I don't understand or says something that I disagree with or that's plain wrong or unpleasant is necessarily a troll. 

I understand what she said, and I am indifferent what she said. Yet I find it difficult to take OP's post seriously, at "The Lobby",

 

 

I'm looking for someone who:

 

...

 

Language and religion does not matter at all to me. I'm willing to learn Hindi or Urdu or whatever the case may be, and possibly even convert to a religion if I like you enough, as long as you practice a contemporary, relatively open-minded form of religion, and are willing to learn about my cultural backgrounds too.

 

Please let me know if this is off-topic for this forum, and where I should go. I've tried places like OKCupid and Plentyoffish but they give me too many irrelevant matches. Coffee Meets Bagel would be much closer to what I'm looking for, but it's not available in Vancouver yet.

 

Those websites and apps are more meeting/dating focused -- if that is what you are looking for. I don't know about Plentyoffish, but OKCupid, in my opinion, has a pretty good algorithm to match with someone that may share the same values and ideology as yours. If you think that you are getting too many irrelevant matches, maybe you should consider answering more questions and make more questions to be more important to you (hence your selection/screening process). To understand the general idea of how these dating website works, you can read the post about how a PhD student (at that time, in Mathematics) found his current S/O here (http://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/).

 

I just thought that since this is a gathering-place for everyone who is thinking about attending or already attending graduate school, there might be a more relevant group of young people I could try to connect with.

 

Those aforementioned criteria seems very stringent if you are intend to meet other grad students who are attending UBC / near UBC only, based on what you wrote.

[Stephαnie]

@abberant -- I looked at the Wired link you posted and I am not sure if you are playing a joke on me or not. You can't be literally suggesting that I do what that person did.

 

 

I was sincere when I wrote my opening post.

 

The criteria are stringent because as a woman I do not have a lot of time to waste. Men can wait until they're 35 to look for love, but women just don't have that many years where they are fertile. So I have thought very carefully about what I want, and this was just an attempt to get the message out there.

 

I am sorry if my post somehow annoyed or offended you in any way.

[aberrant]

@abberant -- I looked at the Wired link you posted and I am not sure if you are playing a joke on me or not. You can't be literally suggesting that I do what that person did.

 

 

I was sincere when I wrote my opening post.

 

The criteria are stringent because as a woman I do not have a lot of time to waste. Men can wait until they're 35 to look for love, but women just don't have that many years where they are fertile. So I have thought very carefully about what I want, and this was just an attempt to get the message out there.

 

The point of that link is -- you either write programs (like what he did) to efficiently "filter out" those who you are not interested in, or, you will have to answer a lot of those questions in order to have those dating websites to work.

 

I met my current gf (+90% match) on OKCupid, and I answered +2000 questions total. Most of those questions are no brainer if you already know enough about yourself, and what you are looking for.

 

The "stringent" part is because in your second post you indicated that you were looking for graduate students, which, presumably, looking for schoolmates, new friends, etc. (" a gathering-place for everyone who is thinking about attending or already attending graduate school"). In your first post, however, you did indicate that you are looking for serious relationship. Since, I believe, that The Grad Cafe is a forum mostly about academic / research advice, featuring a bit of everything else that are graduate school-related, I couldn't take your post seriously, and, as the moderators of this forum point out -- you are at the wrong place.

 

I do apologize if anyone here, somehow, offended by my posts, though.

[LittleDarlings]

OP I totally understand where you are coming from.. I have been on OKC, POF, tinder, Coffee Meets Bagels, Hinge and Match. I personally didn't like OKC because the people it kept matching me to were not attractive in my opinion.  POF has better options with regard to attractiveness it is also infamous for being a hookup site so I would be careful of that.  OKC is not a bad website and there are some attractive people I just feel like the amount of attractive people was low.  It all depends on opinion though.  Good luck and meet up is a good source for finding activities that could lead you to someone.

[Stephαnie]

@aberrant Well, I am on the lookout for a serious relationship but as I really just haven't met anyone that I would like to date, I am also basically just seeking to expand my network. Most people meet potential partners through friends-of-friends, after all.

 

Thank you for clarifying about OKCupid. I'll think about giving it a try again sometime, but it is Sunday afternoon now and I haven't finished the reading I wanted to do.

 

 

@LittleDarlings Thank you. I feel less... irrelevant now, haha.

[LittleDarlings]

@aberrant Well, I am on the lookout for a serious relationship but as I really just haven't met anyone that I would like to date, I am also basically just seeking to expand my network. Most people meet potential partners through friends-of-friends, after all.

 

Thank you for clarifying about OKCupid. I'll think about giving it a try again sometime, but it is Sunday afternoon now and I haven't finished the reading I wanted to do.

 

 

@LittleDarlings Thank you. I feel less... irrelevant now, haha.

Hey don't worry one of my first posts was about finding a husband in grad school and a large number of people on here were totally douchey to me.  You want what you want and grad school takes up a lot of time and effort which can suck for people who want to be married and have families before they are old and gray! Good luck!!

[victorydance]

OP I totally understand where you are coming from.. I have been on OKC, POF, tinder, Coffee Meets Bagels, Hinge and Match. I personally didn't like OKC because the people it kept matching me to were not attractive in my opinion.  POF has better options with regard to attractiveness it is also infamous for being a hookup site so I would be careful of that.  OKC is not a bad website and there are some attractive people I just feel like the amount of attractive people was low.  It all depends on opinion though.  Good luck and meet up is a good source for finding activities that could lead you to someone.

 

OKC ranks your profile by attraction voted by other people. So in other words, if you are not being ranked as highly attractive by others viewing your profile, you won't have access to seeing the most attractive people's profiles in searches and matches. 

[LittleDarlings]

OKC ranks your profile by attraction voted by other people. So in other words, if you are not being ranked as highly attractive by others viewing your profile, you won't have access to seeing the most attractive people's profiles in searches and matches. 

I got an email that I was one of the most attractive people on there in my area. 

I just feel like there aren't insanely attractive people in my area.  

[GeoDUDE!]

I get emails every day. 

[lhommependu]

I'm a grad student at UBC as well, OP. Let's d8.

[Cheshire_Cat]

This is bad, but I go on OKC when I want to be told how pretty I am, because I'll get hundreds of messages saying that.  However, I don't want to date any of the guys who do that.  Generally they are not my "type"  Plus, I'm only attracted to people I have a strong emotional bond with, so it was a futile experience to begin with.  Haha.

To the OP- Yes, we have biological clocks, but don't get married because you are running out of time to have kids.  There are other ways to have kids aside from the biological means.  Also, it is better to be single than to be stuck with someone you hate, and if you have kids with that person, it doesn't matter if you get divorced, you are still stuck with them.

[LittleDarlings]

I got an email that I was one of the most attractive people on there in my area. 

I just feel like there aren't insanely attractive people in my area.

NVM

Edited March 16, 2015 by LittleDarlings

[lhommependu]

STephanie is now my GF we are very happy together. Please lock this thread and move to the Gradcafe Success Stories forum.

[Much Anxious Very Waiting]

 

 

The criteria are stringent because as a woman I do not have a lot of time to waste. Men can wait until they're 35 to look for love, but women just don't have that many years where they are fertile. So I have thought very carefully about what I want, and this was just an attempt to get the message out there.

 

I am sorry if my post somehow annoyed or offended you in any way.

 

 I wish there was a stronger eyeroll emoji

[GeoDUDE!]

Wouldn't you want to settle and have less requirements if you felt you didn't have much time?

[isilya]

can we stop mocking people for their life choices? jeez

[Stephαnie]

Gosh...... I thought graduate students / young adults who are considering a career in academia would be mature, respectful people.

 

Mods please delete or lock this thread.

[fuzzylogician]

I agree that the conversation has taken an unfortunate turn for the worse, so I am indeed going to lock the thread. It's too bad that it had to end this way.