You enter a classroom full of people you don’t know–not yet at least. Feet jitter indecisively and you start to take a step back, because watching feels more comfortable than mingling. 

Or maybe you’re at a strange table in Commons, pushing around your vegan pad thai instead of small talk. Small as our campus seems, the social freedom presented to you can feel overwhelming. You are hungry to know more about the people who will share a home with you for the next four years. This is it: meet the people you that belong with, who will make Bates a place you belong to– no pressure though.

You finally get to chatting. Sometimes the conversation flows, and you lose track of time and it feels like you’ve known each other for much longer than a Commons dinner.

But you don’t strike gold every time: some conversations drop into a lull and so you reach into your handy sack of questions for an all-time college classic:

“So, whatchya trynna study?”

Questions like “Where are you from?” and “What’s your major?” are good questions, but it is important to keep in mind WHY we ask them. While the information does help build an image, they are only a glimpse of how the other person perceives, thinks and feels about the world. 

I dreaded small talk when I first got to college. It wasn’t something that had been in my repertoire: people are simply more direct back home (they also don’t speak English). 

Social pleasantries were unfamiliar to me, and I simply didn’t know how to react to even the most basic greeting, deceivingly disguised as a question: “How are you?” 

I would freeze and genuinely evaluate my life, until I could condense my current state of existence into a response, by which time the asker had already moved on. 

Yet, small talk is only trivial when we refuse to let it grow. These questions scratch the surface while probing for a more unique, personalized direction to take the conversation. Through enough awkward encounters with generous conversationalists, I was able to find the purpose of small talk.

Working as an intern in the admissions office, small talk has become an omnipresent part of my summer. Making connections with families and prospective students has taught me some tricks in making conversation, tried and true: Be genuine, be nice and listen.

So, further your conversations! What makes them interested in art history? Their favorite philosopher? Do they enjoy the labs? 

These questions are seeds that you sprinkle along someone’s guarded exterior. Most of them remain dormant, but that’s alright. If just one settles its roots, it’ll expand—first into a fracture, then a crack and finally a window. And through that window you just might find someone a little less unfamiliar.