Junior English major
Even though this university is akin to a small metropolitan area, with more than 30,000 people traversing its campus every day, I still manage to see familiar faces on a daily basis — and I’m sure everybody else does too. Whether an acquaintance from high school, a person who gets coffee the same time as you or a former classmate who was in your introductory math class, there’s always someone around the corner whom we recognize.
I hate small talk with people I know fairly well, much less with people I sort of know. And as terrible as it sounds, whenever I see these quasi-acquaintances, I might walk a little quicker, turn down an alternative path or become terribly engrossed in my iPhone screen — which is sometimes blank. Horrible, I know.
But I’m not the only one who avoids this kind of contact. On the off chance I want to acknowledge these people, I notice that most of the time, they pull the same tricks. I’m inclined to say we all choose to more or less ignore familiar faces because we don’t want them to think we’re stalker-ish, following them from class to class, building to building.
If we all keep ignoring people at this rate, soon we’ll all be faking phone calls so we don’t have to say a simple hello.
As corny as it sounds, there’s always a smile on my face when there is someone on the campus I see who goes out of his or her way to say hello to me. So if I smile when an old acquaintance or a “class friend” says hello to me in passing, why wouldn’t someone else?
This semester, I want to resolve this weird anxiety I have over saying hello to people and simply use the manners my mother taught me. I promise all of my classmates that if I see you outside of Tawes Hall, I’ll offer a simple wave or say hello and then carry on with my day. Everyone should do the same, because at a large university such as this one, a simple hello from someone in the crowd might just make someone else’s day.
Maggie Cassidy is a junior English major. She can be reached at mcassidydbk@gmail.com.
