It’s been 3 weeks since I started my first job after my bachelors, and I’m feeling pretty isolated at work. I think this is due to several reasons. First, I work at a tech company, and I’m the only girl on my team of 8 people. Not to mention most of the people on my team have PhDs and already have families, While I’m excited to learn from them, I constantly feel like the dumbest person on the team. They always talk about guy stuff and their kids, so I have nothing in common with them. As a result, they don’t really talk to me and I don’t really talk to them.
The second reason is a bit harder to overcome. I would say I’m an awkward person. Only some people can make me open up, but most of the people I’ve met cannot. I’m not so awkward with my close friends, but with someone new, I’m always pretty awkward. I never really had confidence in my social skills. Every time I socialize with someone, I think about how long it would take before they get bored of me. I used to be very confident in my technical and academic skills, but now in a team of phds, I have lost that kind of confidence. So now, I lack all kinds of confidence, which makes me even more awkward than I already am. I see my team members chatting with each other like they’re buddies, but they do not see me that way, and I can’t help feeling like I will never get on their good side. What do I do to overcome this??