Bonnie Chau Chau is a second-year
English student who considers herself one part stoic and one part
condescending. But she is trying to change. Really. Contact her at
bchau@media.ucla.edu.
Click Here for more articles by Bonnie Chau
The dawning of a new quarter always has me quite excited. New
notebooks, new classes, new rooms, new books, new professors, TAs,
classmates, friends! For some reason or another, I always think to
myself, “Yay! Maybe I will meet some really cool people in
lecture/discussion/workshop/whatever.” How exciting!
But really, how much of a reality is this? How many good friends
have I made from classes? (Ahem, that would be zero) But this is
apparently not a singular phenomenon. The more I talk to people,
the more I find that rarely do we make friends in classes. But
why?
Obstacles seem to come in a wide range. What’s your
excuse? Which type of class persona do you have?
Surprisingly, more than one person I spoke to confessed to
having a type of alternate in-class personality. Common sentiment
among this two-faced type runs along the lines of “I go in
right when class starts, sit down in an aisle seat in the back row,
take notes and leave.” A person categorized as a Two-facer
usually accessorizes this type of behavior with specific in-class
facial expressions. These might range from the silent stone-faced
stoic who remains expressionless in the face of all corny jokes and
cringe-worthy sights, to the person whose method of mayhem is bared
teeth and a perpetual grimace. These attempts to stave off
potential friends are but incentives for the rest of us to break
through those tough guy barriers.
Then there is the Meek Mouse, who is so intimidated by the
academic setting that the thought of making friends does not even
occur to them. I agree, the formats or settings of some courses or
rooms may not be particularly conducive to small talk. Large
lecture halls in which professors spend 50 or 75 or 110 minutes
reading off of notes might not seem to facilitate friend-making.
But au contraire my Meek Mouse friends, this is actually probably
the perfect environment. In large classes, since every seat is
occupied, you’re likely to be sitting next to at least one
stranger. And there will be so much rustling and so much distance
from the front where the professor is, that a little chitchat would
only do you good. Break the ice by jumping straight into
conversation as if you have been friends for a long time, waxing
poetic on your dinner the night before, last weekend’s party,
or your summer plans.
The Condescending Folk might believe that they already have
enough friends. And they simply can’t afford to add new
people to their jam-packed social lives and calendars. That’s
a load of crap. Or they have carefully scrutinized every single
person in the class and decided everyone is too annoying. Or, the
other type of Condescending Folk refuses to befriend people in
their own major or people who would take the same class as
themselves. These are self-hating people who don’t deserve
new friends.
There is the type who doesn’t try to talk to other people
because it’s just not something you do in class. Nobody has
ever tried to be friends with the Conformist so they feel no need
to try befriending anyone else. These Conformists are idiots and
are just using a lame excuse to make up for the fact that they are
idiots.
Which brings up the Lame-Excuse type. Maybe it’s because
it’s 8 a.m. and you haven’t fully awakened yet and
can’t really gather enough intellect to speak. Or it’s
nearing noon and you’re too embarrassed to talk to the person
sitting next to you after your stomach starts making disgruntled
machinery sounds. Or perhaps it’s 2 p.m. and it’s your
silent self-denying ascetic zen time. Or it’s 5 p.m. and,
hey, you wouldn’t want to risk opening your mouth and
overwhelming an unsuspecting stranger with your charming words so
much that you’d be late to dinner. All of these excuses
are lame (hence the lame excuse name); these people should
concentrate their creative efforts into more productive
friend-making outlets.
Then there is the Love-‘Em-And-Leave-‘Em type. This
type is most common in discussion sections, in which faux intimacy
is almost expected. The Love-‘Em-And-Leave-‘Em type
sits in the same area every time and makes sure to get at least one
phone number of someone else who always sits near the same area
too, just in case notes need to be borrowed. After the quarter is
over, however, the loved one has, of course, left.
At last, there is the opposite of the anti-friend-making kind of
person. The Pro-Friend is the type of person who saves seats by the
row. This is the type who makes a million friends in class, whose
friends are all from class, who will eventually marry someone they
met in class. Not that we necessarily need to all strive for
Pro-Friend status, and a million friends. But a few is nice.
So the next time you’re in class, put down your paper, put
down your pen, and say hello.