"Hi, do you mind if I join you?"
Those were the words of one stranger at lunch this Monday, and they definitely caught my lunch partner and me by surprise.
At Bowdoin, we have a knack for falling into routines. We find a place where we are comfortable, and we do not often venture out of it. Be it a cozy chair at the Union where we go to study every night, or a carrel in the stacks where we can block out distractions and work until Security kicks us out, we find out what works and we keep doing it.
Mealtimes, though occasionally a chance to catch up with an old friend or get to know new ones, are often spent with the same people—teammates, housemates, floormates, roommates or just mates. We obviously like hanging out with these people and probably see mealtimes as a chance to share a few laughs and stories without fear of judgment or awkwardness; rightly so, for they are our best friends.
Too often we let our inhibitions stop us from using these breaks in our days as a chance to meet new people, or get to know ones we think we know better.
I recently had dinner with a girl who had been in one of my classes every semester of my Bowdoin career, and we felt like we knew each other pretty well, though we had never gone to a meal together.
We discovered neither of us knew what the other was majoring in, I did not know where she was from, and she did not know that I have lived in six different countries. We both considered these facts to be at the core of who we are, and in many ways they are. This embarrassing revelation spoke volumes to how easy it is to think you know someone without actually knowing anything about that person.
Our dinner meeting was not a conscious decision to get to know each other better, but rather, it was a chance occurrence brought about by a mutual friend who both of us had planned on going to dinner with that night.
The point of this story is that by breaking out of our routine and going to a meal with someone new, we learned a lot of interesting things about each other, and probably became better friends because of it.
We frequently complain about Bowdoin's size and how difficult it is to meet new people, or develop meaningful relationships with those whom we do meet. What holds us back is not the size of the student body, but our hesitation to go to a meal with someone we do not already know, or even someone we only kind of know. We are afraid of stilted conversation, awkward misunderstandings and even flat-out rejection.
"What if they don't like me? What are we going to talk about? They'll think I don't have any friends!"
All these worries could be justified, I mean, it is always strange to invite yourself to dinner. But when the alternative is complaining about feeling trapped in your routine or grabbing a bag lunch and watching reruns of the SportsCenter episode you have already watched, the risk of potential embarrassment seems totally worth it.
If you remain unconvinced of the merits of dinners with strangers, I suggest you try it, even just once. While it is easy to think we are all the same at Bowdoin, every one of us has a story to tell. We all have different backgrounds, passions and beliefs, and we are all extremely interesting.
Rarely do we take advantage of the opportunities we have to find out the cool things about our classmates.
It is really as easy as asking, "Do you mind if I join you?"
I was having lunch with one of my best friends, someone I speak with every day and go to meals with at least five times a week, and we both appreciated the confidence that stranger showed in asking to eat with us.
He ate quickly and our conversation was admittedly a little bit awkward, but the experience was, from my perspective, tremendously rewarding. I found out he was a physics major in my year, and he came to Bowdoin for the close interaction he would have with his professors.
As a history major with no intention of taking another physics class at Bowdoin, it is likely I will not see this stranger too much more during my college career, but the simple question he asked when he pulled up a chair to our table gave me a new sense of what is possible if we only step a little outside our comfort zone.
While I do not recommend ignoring friends just to be different, why not try having a meal with someone you have not before?
You might just meet someone really cool.