You've just crossed over into the Friend Zone

The "Friend Zone" is a concept I recently learned about from some of my male coworkers and friends. It sounds harmless enough, but actually, the FZ is a state of relative limbo in which a guy becomes trapped when his friend girl puts up a barrier in their relationship, dashing his hopes of ever potentially being more than "just friends." RhettandLink of YouTube describes it as a "tormented pit of relational Hades" and "the place where single guys go to die." Basically, it's hard to escape.

According to guys I've talked to (and the link above), ways a guy can know he's been Friend Zoned by a girl include- but are not limited to- her:
-Asking him to a movie with a bunch of her girl friends.
-Limiting hugs to the side variety.
-Going for a high five, or calling him "buddy" or any cutesy variation of his own name.
-Explicitly stating through a text message that she doesn't want to be more than friends - before he even tries for a date (true story).

Admittedly, some of these could be bad signs, but at the same time, I evaluate my interactions with guy friends and in some cases, I think these behaviors can indicate uncertainty about how to act - not because the girl doesn't want to be more than friends, but because she doesn't want him to shy away if she indicates too much interest. Of course there are girls that are nothing like me outside the biological sense, so with them, I'm sure there may be an eternal FZ.

That being said, girls are decidedly not the only ones who stick their friends of the opposite gender in an awkward zone of "friends only." Guys do it to girls all the time and I'm telling you from experience that it really bites.

From mine and other girls' experiences, a guy indicates that he's placed a girl in the FZ by:
-Asking her - and her friends - for suggestions on asking girls for their phone numbers.
-Inviting her over to play video games (not so bad, right? She loves video games) - with a bunch of his guy friends.
-Leaving the room to set up a date with another girl during said video game party.
-Asking hypothetical questions that begin, "So, if you were a girl..." (true story, though not mine).

Now, I'm sure it depends on the situation and some of these can be misinterpreted just like the other side, but generally, these experiences tell a girl, "You won't be going on a date any time soon; get used to it." As a girl who grew up with all brothers, and maybe spent more time being "one of the guys" than honing her feminine wiles, I now spend most of my time in the FZ. You could say it's my territory by default, since I certainly don't have to defend it (wildlife reference). To be honest, I tend to get along better with guys and love having their friendship. The problem is that I'd like to date a guy or two at some point, and it seems like most people are quite content to keep their friends close - but at a comfortable distance.

The Wild Side

In high school I couldn't have dreamed that I'd be in a major like Wildlife and Wildlands Conservation. For one thing, I had no idea such a study existed. Classes in public school keep students fairly limited to the disciplines of language arts, mathematics, history and a few sciences, and while I was able to perform well enough in all of these, I certainly can't say I had a passion for them. Each teacher imagined I would go on to an advanced degree in whatever subject he/she taught, but I couldn't explain that passion for good grades does not translate into passion for the core studies.

So far I've completed two semesters in the major, with about five more to go, so I haven't quite decided which career direction I want to take - be it in state departments, federal agencies or some private company. I'm sure I'll figure that out in the next couple of years.

The thing about a major like mine is that it sounds unimpressive. I'm sure any of those core teachers I mentioned would make a guttural sound upon hearing my choice of university study. No, I'm not an economics or engineering major, but as I've discussed in other posts, wildlife/wildlands isn't a "dumbed-down" field of study. I'm doing my best to excel in these courses just as I did in calculus and U.S. history in high school. The classes are interesting to me and this field of work has one of the highest job satisfaction ratings of any out there. I may not make as much as a surgeon, but at least I will be relatively happy.

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog lately, but now that the semester's over I can think about non-school things again. Here's a taste of some activities I've gotten to do as a member of the wildlife and range club this semester that I'm pretty sure nobody experiences in those tame majors:

Attended a falconry event
Wrangled alpacas
Tasted alpaca meat
Shot skeet with a 12-gauge shotgun
Shot balloon leprechauns with a .44 handgun
Rode a 4-wheeler around some sand dunes
Played in a puddle at said dunes
Ate lots of Dutch oven cookin'
Explored some slot canyons
Looked at petroglyphs of bighorn sheep
Visited a local Bureau of Land Management office
Hiked to some dinosaur tracks
Went to a national park and hiked one of its most
famous landmarks
and
Failed to wash the campfire smell out of my clothes

The hike up the landmark was difficult. 5 miles round-trip isn't much, but it was steep and we gained a lot of elevation in a short amount of time, plus my stamina isn't the greatest. Despite the struggles, I was able to make it up the narrow - and kind of scary - sandstone path to the top by taking it one bit at a time.

They say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. I think the same can be said of an alpaca, a burnt Dutch oven meal or a delicious Dutch oven cake. Oh yeah, and it applies to tackling any challenge in life, I suppose. I'm convinced that after making that treacherous climb, I can conquer just about anything that comes my way, as long as I go at my own pace.