I won’t pretend that I’m the most outgoing soul the world has ever seen. Sure, when in my element or comfortable space, I probably have thoughts on various nonsense from the color of the sky to moral philosophy. As someone oriented toward intentional actions rather than doing things just for their sake, “small talk” or similar talking-for-talking’s sake is not something I’m historically all that huge on. While that’s not an exactly fair caricature of what this assignment was about—there was a deeper purpose than talking for its sake—it wasn’t a fully inaccurate assessment of where my head was at going in, either.
Accordingly, being not the most intuitive exercise in the universe, I can’t say it was “easy.” But, anything is reasonable with the right mindset, and part of what I hope to get from this course and wider experience is a push outside of what I would “ordinarily” do. So that was what it was. It was helpful, to me at least, that my partner and I were not approaching this from a space of total unfamiliarity—between the first three sessions of ALA 421 (and especially the identities exercise directly before we found out we would be partnered) there was at at least some familiarity to work with. While this luxury won’t really exist with residents in the fall, I can’t remotely deny that it aided in this exercise.
It was, in spite of the initial familiarity, definitely a bit forced in my view—conversation flowed decently, but it was clear that we were remaining in predefined spaces. Personally, the setting we chose—dining hall—probably didn’t help my willingness to initially dive into anything too particularly deep, but we volleyed discussion about high schools, backgrounds, and time at Michigan with relative ease. Things transitioned a bit, I think, when we found a space of common agreement over certain behaviors that bothered us, and the rest of the conversation flowed a lot more organically. Unsurprisingly, the common ground created a space to expand on other similar topics, and a sort of network of understanding formed from there.
I tend to wear masks in casual conversation without trying, and recognize that this can sometimes be a matter of “reflecting” what I think someone wants to see. Without context, that’s a lot harder to do, and subconsciously that leads to a dislike (discomfort) for small talk where I don’t have context to work with. Accordingly, past experience with cold conversations is probably pretty mediocre at best. Being aware of this is the first important step to avoiding it, though, and reflecting what I hope to see when building relationships with residents by perhaps being more forthcoming than I would naturally be inclined could be helpful. This conversation helped underscore those sorts of effect from my mind, and the knowledge of things that worked/things that didn’t/thing that I’m inclined to do or not do are all helpful moving forward toward the mission of building relationships with residents.
