Dear Clare,

Socially Scarred

Dear Socially Scarred,

Hurrah! Your letter has FINALLY given me the opportunity to discuss something I feel strongly about: awkwardness. I have strong feelings about a state of being? Yes, I do, I am that lame. "Awkward" is a word we use too much, though it is rarely misused. Everyone has experienced it and has stories about how it ruined potentially wonderful situations. There is even a Facebook group (I wish they were more picky with some of those groups because there are just too many) about it in which any one of its almost 1300 members can empathize with each other and share stories about how it ruined their day. Our lovely friends at dictionary.com define awkwardness as "the quality of an embarrassing situation." I couldn't have put it better myself. Indeed, it is dull, uninteresting and quite frankly, pathetic that it is so difficult to meet and have decent conversations with new people.

At the start of every semester I once again am reminded about how completely awkward college students, and alas, human beings are. The TA for your anthropology discussion hasn't yet arrived, and the 25 students around you silently wait as they sit in a circle of chairs in a tiny room of the Humanities building and try to avoid eye contact with each other. Some read the beloved Badger Herald newspaper, while others fidget with their iPods or pretend to be suddenly extremely interested at the length of their fingernails and feverishly try with tooth and other nail to trim them down. Why is it silent in this room of college students who are usually rowdy and endlessly chatting? Why are we scared to acknowledge the existence of other human beings who are only a few feet away from us? Being in this room, you have the opportunity to meet 25 lovely new people! True, they could also be 25 terrible little tyrants, but maybe one of them is your potential best friend, lover or roommate. Maybe one, like you, has an unhealthy obsession with "Les Miserables," and would love nothing more than to accompany you on a road trip around the tri-state area to catch every performance. Bringing down the heightened expectation a bit, maybe one has elegant handwriting and would allow you to photocopy her perfect notes after you have lost your notebook the day before the test. So many opportunities! Yet, chances are that you will only converse with one or two of them all semester, and your conversation will not go past discussing the difficulty you both have in understanding your professor as he plows through the history of Indonesia at a rate that would actually get you to the distant country in five minutes flat.

I'm sorry to once again take advantage of my reader's question by turning it into an opportunity to rant about things that I lie awake thinking about at night. You cannot fault me, dear readers, for exploiting these instances, for if I had no outlet in which to vent, I would surely go even madder. Awkwardness is so irritating because it discourages us from simply going up to others and saying, "Hello, I find the fact that you wear that same baseball hat everyday very intriguing. What is the reason, and what is your name? My name is blah blah blah." No matter what venue we happen to be in, this blunt introduction would immediately be seen as an uncreative pick-up line when it need not be. Are we really that conceited to think everyone who comes up and tries to talk to us has ulterior motives and is really hitting on us?

To answer that seemingly rhetorical question myself, we are indeed that conceited, my friends. Though many times the stranger introducing him or herself probably does have ulterior motives, we should be more open to meeting and accepting new people. Many times it seems that after freshman year, the people you meet can at best only become acquaintances and will never have a chance at establishing a true friendship with you. At a school with over 20,000 undergrads, it is unfortunate that people get stuck in their comfortable social circle that may only have seven people in it and never try to find others who could add some spice to their life. There are over 6,000 students in my senior "class," yet I have probably only met 500 of them. This isn't to say that we should be best friends with everyone, because obviously quality is better than quantity. I am merely saying that we shouldn't be so afraid to get together or even talk with someone we don't know very well, if at all. Even if you find a new person extremely lame, you will get some gratification from the fact that you, unlike them, are not lame and are therefore better than them. If this is the case, then getting that little ego boost was time well spent.

I would like to issue a challenge to you, dear reader, and to my fellow students at this lovely institution that is UW-Madison: the next time you are in a class or social venue, lean over to the person next to you, regardless of gender, and say, "Hello, my name is [insert your name here]." If they are rude, who cares — you have nothing to lose and a potential friend to gain! I met one of my favorite friends from abroad after he came up to me and said, "Hi! You seem really fun. I would like to meet you." If he wouldn't have had the guts to introduce himself, we never would've met and my experience would definitely not have been as fabulous without him.

If that challenge is too intense, then start small, with baby steps by simply saying "Hello" to that guy you always see who was in your chemistry lab three semesters ago. If you "friended" him on Facebook, you might as well acknowledge his existence. Chances are he knows who you are too.

As it is unfair to only offer a challenge to you, my peer, I will now challenge myself to do something that I find difficult: I challenge myself to not use the words "wonderful" or "fabulous" in my column next week. I reserve the right, however, to still be allowed "fantastic." I need at least one of my favorite superlative adjectives to really get my points across.

Good luck in your quest to fully explore the world, Socially Scarred.

Go make friends right now!

Clare

P.S. To all of you bitter single people who spoke all of yesterday about your hate for Valentine's Day: get over it. You are lame for hating a day about love! Just because you aren't "in love" right now doesn't mean that there aren't people to whom you should show your love, though platonic, or should celebrate the fact that they, platonically, love you.