In an effort to up my prolific-meter to da max for this year's upcoming NaNoWriMo, I've decided to take every opportunity I can to exercise my atrophied literary muscles. This is an article I've written for Boston U's paper, The Daily Free Press, but I think it can apply to folks who don't go here, too.
Do you really *know* anybody? Come fall time at BU, it's not just the weather that's getting colder. It’s around this time of year that the raw sociability of new students thrown into the mix gives way to a more frigid exclusivity. What ever happened to those first few weeks, where the invisible walls that seem to divide us all with strict boundaries of “awkward,” “creepy,” and “sketchy” were virtually non-existent? When, since you didn’t know anybody, you might as well know everybody? I don’t think anybody’s entitled to elitism, and once those walls come down, I think it’d be a shame to start building them up again to hide behind.
Maybe it’s on account of this unparalleled openness that people close up all the more afterwards in contrast. Certainly we can’t bare ourselves completely before peers we don’t know 24/7. That’s what MySpace and Facebook are for.
I understand that people may become less socially expansive to better develop friendships they’ve already begun to make. True friendships often take a long time to build. Also, always remaining open to meeting new people can seem like a vulnerable place to be; however, I think that’s only a problem when people in general are off-limits and when the friendly smile is met by a cold gaze. Being “chill” is seen as an admirable characteristic, but what ever happened to being “warm?”
We outgrew “don’t talk to strangers” before we came to college, and while certain caution is always in order, it should never limit us from branching out. If you’re out of town and you run into somebody from your home town, you’ve got something in common that, even if you know none of the same people, is a common ground on which the two of you can interact. It’s a similar situation when you’re out of state and you run into someone from your home state. And when you’re traveling abroad and you run into an American, it can be a refreshing and relieving break from the international experience. Suddenly, because of sharing something in common, you have a pretense to interact.
Well, to take it one step further, we’re all people, we’re all troubled by similar problems and exhilarated by similar joys every day. In fact, we all share quite a lot in common – enough in common, I think, to empower us all to be free to speak with anybody, nevermind if we know them or not. It’s my opinion that as it begins to get chillier this fall, we should all do the opposite: thaw out, open our hearts and minds a little, and keep on giving new people a chance.
Do you really *know* anybody? Come fall time at BU, it's not just the weather that's getting colder. It’s around this time of year that the raw sociability of new students thrown into the mix gives way to a more frigid exclusivity. What ever happened to those first few weeks, where the invisible walls that seem to divide us all with strict boundaries of “awkward,” “creepy,” and “sketchy” were virtually non-existent? When, since you didn’t know anybody, you might as well know everybody? I don’t think anybody’s entitled to elitism, and once those walls come down, I think it’d be a shame to start building them up again to hide behind.
Maybe it’s on account of this unparalleled openness that people close up all the more afterwards in contrast. Certainly we can’t bare ourselves completely before peers we don’t know 24/7. That’s what MySpace and Facebook are for.
I understand that people may become less socially expansive to better develop friendships they’ve already begun to make. True friendships often take a long time to build. Also, always remaining open to meeting new people can seem like a vulnerable place to be; however, I think that’s only a problem when people in general are off-limits and when the friendly smile is met by a cold gaze. Being “chill” is seen as an admirable characteristic, but what ever happened to being “warm?”
We outgrew “don’t talk to strangers” before we came to college, and while certain caution is always in order, it should never limit us from branching out. If you’re out of town and you run into somebody from your home town, you’ve got something in common that, even if you know none of the same people, is a common ground on which the two of you can interact. It’s a similar situation when you’re out of state and you run into someone from your home state. And when you’re traveling abroad and you run into an American, it can be a refreshing and relieving break from the international experience. Suddenly, because of sharing something in common, you have a pretense to interact.
Well, to take it one step further, we’re all people, we’re all troubled by similar problems and exhilarated by similar joys every day. In fact, we all share quite a lot in common – enough in common, I think, to empower us all to be free to speak with anybody, nevermind if we know them or not. It’s my opinion that as it begins to get chillier this fall, we should all do the opposite: thaw out, open our hearts and minds a little, and keep on giving new people a chance.
