Loss of social skills through studying/working too much

OK, who else has experienced this? For instance, since finals are coming up, for the last 3 weeks I had been studying hardcore 10+ hours a day in the library with almost no human contact except for one guy friend. I realized that during this period my social skills had heavily deteriorated to the point where I feel even a bit awkward talking to guys!

Today I went on a 1 hour long coffee break day2 with a girl that I #closed 3 days ago (still socially calibrated enough to direct approach for 5 minutes). I felt a bit nervous and out-of-state even before I met up with her! The nervousness went away after 5 min. of talking to her. However, towards the latter half of the day2, I had trouble taking control of the direction of the conversation and meek and boring topics started to dominate the interaction. I originally planned on kissing her by going D and talking about sexual topics, however, I strayed and couldn't get back on course. Kissing her would feel massively unnatural. So in the end I told her I'd have to get back to my studies and left the coffee shop together. I hugged her and told her to kiss me on the cheek, to which she refused. I"ll try to set up another date, but I feel like I did not leave the impression that I wanted or expected.

This was a massive step-back from before the 3-week study binge. I'm a little bit frustrated, since it means that I have lost some of the progress that I'd made before finals came along. Does anyone with a high-stress educational environment or job experience this?

Mod, I realize that this topic is better suited for the main lounge. Please excuse me for posting in the wrong forum.

You'll find feeling frustrated is counter productive, the best thing to do is consciously relax. Frustration is very similar to stress and as we all know when we are stress or frustrated we cant think straight.

Picking up for me personally is like riding a bike, I might not get better if I don't practice but I never really lose the skill either. Personal progress comes in peaks and dips. A lot of people think they can have exponential progress all of the time, this is not the case. Some days will be better than others. As a matter of fact some months and years will be better than others.

So chill and keep it consistent, because 1 set really doesn't mean much. If your serious about game you should be looking at somewhere between 20 sets a week minimum and that's only modestly speaking.

Hope that helps.

It's only natural that you would feel like you've stepped back a bit. If you lock yourself in a room to study and not talk to anyone, of course you're going to feel awkward getting back into it. It can't be helped, you have to study, but you can't afford an hour a day or every other day to take a break and get some good old fashioned human interaction? Pick up is a skill set that you have to practice. The minute you get out of it you lose progress. APB always says that girls can never get out of the game once they hit puberty because of the pure fact that they are female and guys will always hit on them. But for guys, they can just remove themselves and go play video games or in your case, study.

You might have lost a bit of social aptitude but it can be easily regained. The important thing is to not let it happen again! It's like working out at the gym for months on end and then stopping for three weeks, you lose a lot of muscle memory. I would recommend taking those short breaks from studying to grab dinner or coffee or what not. I mean, you've got to eat, right? Also, go to events on campus or if your 21 hit up some happy hours. They are early enough that they will still leave time for studying afterward. This can be frustrating if you're a busy person and you're not alone in trying to balance a social life with work/career/school. But you also can't just work all of the time. If you do you'll slowly see your social circle deteriorate. Good luck with finals if you haven't taken them yet!

<3 Sara

I'm in that zone myself - save that mine is due to the fact that I've just gotten out of a relationship that spanned 7 months. Its funny how life tends to work against your desires: I couldn't converse normally with women, so I learned how to. When I did, I got a girlfriend. Then I got complacent with just having one usual girl around, we break up, and now I suck at talking to women once again.

I swear, it's a horrible endless, vicious, cruel cycle.