The great thing about college is that you have 8 opportunities to start the process of meeting people and making friends all over again (oh wait did I say that was a good thing?). The pool of available acquaintances is deep and fresh and sometimes full of vicious watery creatures.
Of course, meeting people requires talking to them, and the first couple days of the semester are usually full of questions like What's your name, Where are you from, What are you majoring in, How many credits are you taking, Are you a democrat, What Hogwarts house are you in, etc. My answers are always the same: Rachel, Colorado, something you'll judge me for, 16, NO, Slytherin. Once you memorize the answers to these questions, you can recite them verbatim before the questions can even come out of your conversation partner's mouth, which is an efficient skill guaranteed to end the conversation in an awkward silence and the annoyance of the other person.
Today, I successfully managed to avoid opening my mouth in my first and only class of the day. I almost escaped silence without having to talk to anyone...until someone at the bus stop was able to discern that I was deeply absorbed in my book and therefore deserved to be talked to. We talked. The conversation did not come easily. Luckily, the bus ride was short.
When I arrived home, I had to take a quick trip to the store. The girl at the counter launched a pleasant verbal assault on me as soon as I walked in the door. While I checked out, we had a short conversation about how nice it was to have Christmas break. While I was having this conversation, the thought "Wow, I bet she talks about the same thing with everyone. This is not very deep" popped into my head.
As I left, however, I came to a realization. The quality of the conversation didn't matter as much as the effort to engage another human being in conversation at all. People tend to ignore one another's existence as best as possible outside of a small group of friends and we often do a great job of pretending not to see someone walking past you or entering the same room as you. Conversation, however awkward and redundant, is at least an acknowledgment of another's existence. Life doesn't have to be full of profundity, it just has to be full of effort.
On another note, I want my books to come in the mail.
