Should you ever repeat the subject "我“ in a sentence?

Question

So, I struggle with a common construction in Chinese where I don't know whether I should use the subject twice or not. For example, in the sentence "After I finished talking with her I went to mcdonalds" uses the word "I" twice in english. However, I'm not sure if this is necessary/common in Chinese.

For that sentence, as an example, I could say

我跟他聊完以后， (我） 就直接去麦当劳。

Is that 我

1. Necessary?
2. Unnecessary but acceptable
3. Just kind of awkward

Thanks for all of your help! I know that there are a lot of situations when this happen.

Answer 1

1. Unnecessary.

2. In spoken language it is acceptable and actually quite common. In written language it should be avoided.

3. Depends on the context. In your example it doesn't sound awkward at all.

Side note: As pointed out by this article, in Chinese, using the same word again and again is not as awkward as bad repetition in English and sometimes it's the only way to satisfy grammatical requirements. Not directly related but similarly, unnecessary repetitions in general have more appearances in spoken Chinese than in English and sound less awkward. You should not feel bad about it.

Answer 2

There's no different between Chinese and English on the usage of I (我) in this case:

1) I go to MacDonald after I talk to him
2) I go to MacDonald after talking to him

Answer 3

Two repeating 我 is sort of awkward. It is better to omit the first 我

跟他聊完以后，我就直接去麦当劳。

Compare the same structure in English: after talking with him, I...)

Answer 4

跟他聊完以後，我就直接往麥當勞去。

or

我跟他聊完以後，就直接往麥當勞去。

In this particular sentence, it is really awkward to have two "我".