Old Homework

I was going through a pile of old homework and notes in my closet tonight in preparation for moving. (Which is a ways of just yet.) I realized several things:

-I spent a fortune on binders
-I generally only filled notebooks halfway
-I'm not going to be able to relearn stuff from my notes on a subject which I only had a tenuous grasp of in the first place.

I also found some old homework assignments such as the one from Communications 134, were we all had to go out and have a conversation with a stranger. I shall post it here because my old essays entertain me.

Michael Kadel
CMN 134
Homework #3

Conversation Reaction

The only stranger I managed to have a conversation with during the time span of this assignment was this girl named Amanda at the G Street pub. The reason I approached her was, I’ll admit it, that she was attractive. She was sitting across the table from me. I was sitting next to someone I knew, but the rest of the table was occupied by friends of the person I was sitting next to.

The reason for the interaction was that I was quite simply looking for a date, well that and I needed a conversation for this assignment. I’m a terribly shy person who doesn’t just wander around having conversations with strangers. I don’t form sentences very well when I’m trying to carry on a conversation with someone I don’t know. This was the case when I had my conversation with Amanda.

I did my best to engage in small talk, but the lack of even flow seemed to make her, as well as me, a little uncomfortable. Many of the rules of conversation were broken, some on accident, some by necessity. One such broken rule was number five: Be efficient. Due to my lack of sentence forming ability when I’m nervous, I tend to restate things several times. I’ll leave out words, and then try again when I realize what I’ve said so far doesn’t make sense. Hardly the picture of efficiency. Another rule I broke was number three: Be clear. For some reason I seemed to have what seemed like millions of obscure movie references to draw from, none of which she had seen. Jokes go over so poorly when the receiving party doesn’t get it. The last rule which was broken was number ten: Be articulate. We were in a bar, and there was a band playing, so shouting was the only way to carry on any sort of conversation at all. In addition, my voice does not carry well, so articulation was not in the cards.

Over all I’m not that satisfied with the interaction. Just the fact that I tried to have the conversation at all is commendable for me, but the result was not as I had hoped it would be. Amanda seemed uninterested in the conversation which made it especially hard to keep it going. Even if she had been more interested, it was difficult to hear over the band. To file the dialog, I would categorize it two ways. On my end, it was Genuine Dialog. I was trying to talk to her as an individual and was concerned with trying to begin a relationship. From her end I would categorize the conversation as Monologic. She wasn’t so much talking to me as she was trying not to seem rude.

Next time I think I’ll try to find someone who seems more interested in a conversation to begin with, instead of picking someone uninterested who is near by. I will also try to start these thing when the background noise is at a reasonable volume. Other than those two improvements, I need to improve me ability to converse with strangers. But I can’t necessarily change that for “next time.” Improvement in that area will only come with practice, and with many more uncomfortable conversations.