Tangent Conversations

Tangent WRITTEN BY ANNA HOLMES Conversations

I will be the first to admit that I may be a little too comfortable with my roommates. For the four approximate months that all five of us have shared a living space we have had a varied range of conversations. These topics range from your less than typical romance banter to ramblings about whenever Elsa in Frozen II wears pants.

It’s almost guaranteed that when you put five female university students who are of similar age, and most of whom are studying in the creative industries, that they will become fast friends. Not one of my roommates knew the others existed until the beginning of semester one. Most people living in our apartment building are in the situation, I would say it would be for the same reason also. That reason being that as first year university students from rural Queensland towns, we hadn’t anyone we knew to share a household with when we moved to Brisbane for university. The confined space of our tiny apartment doesn’t often provide the luxury of privatary or anytime completely to yourself, therefore the introductory process between peers happens pretty swiftly. Even the more intimate knowledge of one’s self is not safe from the paper thin walls and shared bathroom spaces. Needless to say that girls who were once strangers, now are easily the people I have come to depend on. However, the length of time we have known each other has not saved our friendship from the weird but wonderful conversations that most Millennial/Generation Z friendships seem to endure. From heated debates about whether we would marry or mummy Timothee Chalamet, to tense arguments about the placebo effect and whether it is bullshit or not. These conversations are usually steamed from seemingly mundane topics. Such as the Timothee Chalamet debate developed from a chat about a film analysis assessment one of my roommates had for her class. In a similar fashion the argument regarding placebos ensued because of a conversation about mental health. It seems obvious that these tangent conversations have no relevance in the everyday life of young female university students. However, I have started to observe the nature of these topics and have hypothesised a few theories about the sub-group of humanity that is cursp millennial women in university.

Theory one, we these utilise self proclaimed tangent conversations as an escape for the formality of the university lifestyle. For many of us university students, we interact with an array of professionals on a dear daily basis, many of which are in our desired field of practice, therefore, making these people potential mentors, employers and workmates.

This implies that we as practitioners are always on display for the future of our work industry. Wanting to make ‘good’ impressions, we as students subject ourselves to vicarious formalities. Such as performing extra research on a topic just to be able to say something ‘intellectual’ in a tutorial, or exerting excessive communication with said professional via email. These periods of time spent either in a class or performing work for units outside of said class, requires a student to maintain this excessive structure of formality. It is my hypothesis that students ‘use-up’ their ability to communicate in a concise, focused, ‘formal’, manner during these periods of university- work in their schedules and therefore, any other conservations become an outlet for silly, ‘informal’ conversations. The evidence I have obtained to prove this hypothesis consists of the numerous occasions I have witnessed my roommates in online tutorials, and amendently after the zoom call has ended they are wanting to engage in a debate about whether or not Achilles and Patroclus were gay. I find my roommates need to express thoughts, that may not be relevant or appropriate in an academic setting, to each other when the class work is particularly dense. In summary, our tangent conversations are an outlet for students to express their not-so-intelligent thoughts before having to submerge themselves back into the formalities of the academic lifestyle.

Theory two, the brains of those born in the millennial and Gen Z eras have particularly erratic thoughts. With the age of social media, also came insights into the private and personal side of society that were not usually shared in such a public manner. However, now we are exposed to everyone’s thoughts and conversations, and we can see just how erratic those of young people are. We see the Facebook pages utilised once a year for QCS memes, Instagram threads regarding making an egg more popular than Kylie Jenner and the list could go on. This is evidence that many people out there in the world are having the same thoughts and conversations as my roommates and I. Is it this innate behaviour of the human brain, that causes these tangent conversations? It’s definitely a possibility. Theory three is that it is not the fact that we are university students or that the brains of our generation are just ‘wired’ that way, it is that we in my apartment are creatives. All the young women residing in this apartment with me almost all study a form for the creative arts, having an animator, film maker and two drama students all under one roof. Even my roommate not studying the arts was a dancer

in the past, therefore we have adopted her as a creative. This hypothesis suggests that the creative mind, no matter what age, is innately erratic and always actively the weird and wonder sides to a topic. This would explain why these tangent conversations we have become narrowed into such niched topics that are always seemingly random. Maybe, like the paragraph above but instead of age being the underlying factor of erratic brain activity, it’s a career pathway. Is it that having creative inhibitions also is intrinsically linked to having tangent conversations? This could also be true.

In all three theories they cover an intrinsic part of who my roommates and I are. We are young. We are academic. We are creative. These elements of self are what we justify our tangent conversations. Not our procrastination to think about the formalities of university conversation. Not our plaguing thoughts about what to base our next animation/film/ play off of. Not our the fact that people the internet has exposed our generation to weird and wonderful ideas, that without them we would not be able to think of these tangential topics anyway. Wherever these conversation come for I have learnt to enjoy their erraticness and I am glad be comfortable enough with four friends to share my own.