As someone who has the social skills of a potato on downers, I have a difficult time getting to know new people.
This piece of information was certainly no comfort during the college application process as I envisioned a multitude of foreign bodies with indistinct faces hovering toward me over some quad or student lounge floor, expecting a coherent greeting.
My language faculties, when used as a means of communicating with strangers, vitiates into grunts, coughs, and half-words (ex. “How’s it goi-…”). It is a fairly sustainable habit that comes with only the minor inconvenience of people believing—perhaps not incorrectly—that you belong in a mental institution.
However, it is a terrible habit to have as a first year. If I was going to integrate well into college life, I had to make a change.
But I did not make a change. I am a stubborn individual when it comes to my character traits.
Changing one’s personality is akin to admitting one has a flaw; I do not admit such things. So it was with this social handicap in tow my person I entered Bowdoin.
Luckily, it proved to be no serious detriment. My roommates were as reticent as I when we first met, but each of us grew more comfortable speaking in stretches that extended beyond a single sentence as time went on.
My robust social circle even expanded to include all of my floor mates.
Due to the fact that I often grab breakfast, lunch and/or dinner with my floormates, I am exposed to their friends on a fairly regular basis.
However, I do not often extend much more to these strange new people than a kind word of hello and an earnest inquisition into their place of residence and class schedule.
For whatever reason, I decided to break convention at a recent lunch. Something very powerful shot through me, relaying the message that it was dissatisfied with the usual.
Never one to disobey authoritative internal notions of mysterious origin, I perked up and searched for the first opportunity to act on this new impulse.
When a friend of a friend’s friend sat across from me and spoke about her floor not being very close, I knew my opportunity had arrived. I offered to “serenade” her floor and bring about harmony within the poorly bound group. Surprisingly, she accepted the offer.
It took me about a week to actually getting around to hauling my guitar and a confused singing partner to the floor in question. And when I arrived, the students were so busy with homework—or so they said—that I ended up playing only for the girl to whom I had made the promise and a roommate of hers who fluttered in at the tail end of the show.
However, it was not as large a mess as it would seem. My audience enjoyed the performance—or so they said—and I ended up getting to know a total of four new people.
Over the course of the hour I was there, two of the girls’ other roommates entered following the extemporaneous showcase of brilliantly average guitar playing and singing.
Make of the tale what you will. Perhaps it is a story of overcoming a personality flaw without admitting it outright.
Perhaps it is a story about the benefits of doing things on an impulse. Perhaps it is a story about the positive outcome of telling strangers where you live. Who can say?
All that is certain is that a good time was had, and one cannot ask for much more.