As students, we always joke about how irrelevant classes are for our everyday lives. After all, we have calculators for math problems, dictionaries for English questions and Google for virtually anything else. Is it possible that we are retaining some information from our classes and actually using it every day? If so, is this intelligence making us socially awkward?
Since I started taking communication classes, I would have to argue, 'Yes.'
As a journalism major, I stick with a calculator and an accounting-major-as-a-best-friend approach to math, but when it comes to communicating with people, I have noticed a strong presence of the classes I am taking.
Everyone has experienced communication barriers when casually talking with people outside of your major or college. When we try to use jargon from our majors, even when gabbing with close friends, conversation can become confusing and stiff.
Currently, I am studying nonverbal communication. This class significantly affects my ability to chat casually with friends, especially on the two days I attend lecture. After studying how people move and why, I frequently analyze the gestures that accompany my friends' stories. But attention to nonverbal has become a hindrance in my communication abilities and I come across as uncouth.
Instead of listening intently to their tales, I am thinking about how to sit, how they are sitting, how to act, how my facial expressions are conveying my emotions, whether or not I should look directly into my friends' eyes (because you can't actually look into both eyes at the same time) and even how to hold my hands. As you can imagine, this Ricky Bobby-esque dilemma makes light conversation awkward, to say the least.
My friends are guilty of the uncomfortable conversation, also. During spring break--the one week of the semester we are allowed to forget about classes--my accounting friend whips out her cellphone, opens the calculator app and computes our group's expenses for the entire trip.
The table jokingly referred to her as a nerd for even wanting to figure out our financial downfalls. We had no interest to discuss how much we had spent on Mai Tais and Bahama Mamas, but it was interesting to her ,so we obliged, even though it put a hold on the casual conversation.
I am by no means suggesting we tune out what our professors are trying to teach us, but it is important to steer our scholarly observations in a direction that aides our ability to have short conversations with acquaintances.
Hopefully, our close friends are likely to overlook our awkward, over-analytical interruptions--if we are lucky.
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