Sorry it has been a long time since I rapped at you... I have no good excuse.
So last thursday, I was sitting in class that was being taught by some army SF dudes. They mentioned that in there hotel there was hundreds of hot chicks. They figured out that they were all in town for some convention. This was just a casual comment so I didn't think much more than wish I was at that hotel instead of my own.
Thursday night: Several other guys and I weren't flying on friday, so we went out that thursday night. Downtown we kept running into these little groups of people (Mostly mid twenties girls) that where all psychology grad students. I talked to them quite a bit... fairly interesting though a little academic. They told me that there was a convention that they were all attending. I figured out where it was.. and other tactically relevent information and decided that I should go check on this place tomorrow morning. Hell, my car was going to be downtown already and I'd have to go get it, might as well stop in at the convention center.
Friday morning: I take the cab downtown to pick up my car. After I move it out of the away zone it was in all night I park it a few blocks away at the convention center and go in. Drat! It seems you have to be affiliated with a place of higher learning in order to get one of the passes that let you into the exhibition hall. This shouldn't present to much of a problem, I'll just make up some school I am associated with and go in. No dice... the University you attend has to pay about a $300 entrance fee to participate. That's not going to happen... especially since i don't plan to stay for the whole convention and I hate cover charges. And given that I am mostly going to meet girls, it is effectively a cover charge. Actually it offended me a little bit that they were charging to participate in the advancement of human knowledge! This isn't in the spirit of higher learning. The set up is that there is a set of double doors that go to a large room with all the poster presentations and main stuff going on in it. Out in the hall is where the registration desk is. Guarding the door is some fairly militant and thourogh woman who checks everyone who enters for their Convention passes... Everyone has them in little plastic envelopes that they have hanging from their necks. I don't even have a plastic envelope let alone anything that looks remotely like the pass. I circle the building to see if there is an alternate entrance from the outside. There is none. Now, normally I would have just gone home at this point, but seeing as I am in this training mindset I thought about it this way... "If I am spending all week learning to sneak through a hostile city at war, it would be shameful if I am stopped from hitting on/debating science with all these psychologist girls by a door guarded by a middle aged woman." So I decide that I have to get in for my own pride now! Now it is just for the challenge of getting in. I devise a plan. First, I pick up some free psychology literature that is sitting on some tables in the hall way. This is just to make me look a little more legitimate. After that, I walk to the wall next to the door on the opposite side of the doorway from the guard woman, acting like I have no intention of going in. I am looking at my cell phone and pretend to be texting someone. Using my peripheral vision I watch till the woman is distracted and looking the other way. After a quick glance to confirm her distraction I roll around the door frame and nonchalantly walk into the crowd of academics on the other side.
Fuck Yea! I am in!
I walk around getting my orientation. It is roughly the size of a high school gymnasium, there are temporary partitions covered with poster presentations in the center of the room with tables around the perimeter. Holy Shit! There are literally hundreds of good looking girls!... and like 50 nerdy looking guys. What the hell kind of universe have I stumbled into? Apparently all the hotties study Psychology! This is going super easy right! I walk around and start looking at the posters. As far as I can tell, if you want a masters/doctorate in psyche... all you have to do is compare two traits and assume they correlate. One example would be, "How does male aggressiveness correlate to romantic infidelity?" That is a the kind of thing that seems to be researched in this field, though the title of the research would be almost incomprehensible due to the academic psychological double speak. I actually had no problem at all hanging in discussions with these experts in this field and easily passed as a psyche grad student. Though my main mission was meeting girls, I found myself getting into debates quite often. Actually that is what I ended up spending most of my time there doing. Coming from a background of hard science, I found their experiments in general full of holes and their use of statistics quite dodgy, not to mention the presentation of mathematical data in the posters to be poorly done at best and misleading at worst. Overall I was not impressed with the scientific rigorousness of the field. Of the 40 or so posters I looked at in detail, in only one did the experimental results not support the hypothesis. It seems incredible that so many psychologists are always right... I asked one student about that, her response was that there is no interest in negative results... and in general if the data indicates something besides the hypothesis, then usually the hypothesis just gets rewritten. Disappointing. There was some very interesting research going on too though. My favorite was "Does sexual arousal decrease judgment?" Hmmm... I am sure that there is more than anecdotal evidence to support the idea that it does, but that research was unfortunately not yet complete, but I have a good idea of what kind of results they will get.
Oh yea! now back to the girls. Basically I had no useful game at all. It was just as bad as trying to talk to 19 year old Swedish girls! I was particularly surprised because I do my best work when I am sober and get into in depth conversations. This should have been my best scenario possible... Yet still it was a useless place to pick up girls. I did notice that I was the only guy that was trying to run any game at all. Either all these psych dudes didn't notice they are surrounded by hundreds of hotties or they already figured out that it was a useless endeavor.
Regardless of the girls it was a very interesting way to spend a friday morning in Albuquerque.
Saturday afternoon: I spent all day Saturday doing field excersises with the army SF dudes. The ones who are staying in the same hotel with all the psych grad studs. After the training was over I mentioned that I had gone to the convention. I related the story how I got in and they where very proud! As I was telling the story, I could tell that they were very hopeful! Then when I got to the part about how the girls seemed impervious to me they laughed much more than I would have expected. As it turns out they have spent the last three nights in their hotel bar trying to get with them too... with the exact same results. The army guys said you can talk to them all night in a hotel bar, but they don't get drunk and seem to have no physical (read that carnal) interests at all. They said when they start talking to one girl, all the others seem to close ranks in some protective formation. I told them that I figured Army SF guys would have been able to pull something with these girls... they said the same about pilots. We concluded that some girls just have really poor tastes in men. (Not being attracted to us being the poor tastes... for all you out there that might misinterpret that.) It is the only plausible explanation really.
So what did we learn? First of all, that psych grad students go in the same category as swedish girls. That category being "Good Looking but Unfortunately Useless Women." We also learned that Psychology is not a real science... it is a combination of gossip and playing mind games on people. Third and finally, we learned that if you have a room full of women you want to guard it takes more than plastic envelopes and a guard to protect them.
