Smiling at strangers

In late October I was averaging what I thought to be an impressive four hellos on my daily mid-morning walk from my dorm room to Italian class. They weren’t people I knew exactly, for “know” is a strong word to describe our poorly defined relationships. They were other freshmen that I’d met in passing, friends of friends or people who happened to have the same dining schedule as my own. In those early months of school, there was the idealistic possibility that each fleeting conversation of “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What’s your major?” could yield some blissful friendship or, at the very least, another lonely soul to acknowledge your presence as you trudged from one class to the next.

And so I was pleased with the regular greetings from the four of my not-quite-acquaintances. But late October passed into mid-November, and the hellos disintegrated into a sort of head nod that could be mistaken for an involuntary tic by the casual passerby. There appeared to be a quiet agreement among slowly acclimating freshmen that the nod be a refined gesture of “Hey, we’re not friends, but I knew your name once.”

Now it’s December, and the nod is the standard. That two-and-a-half month period of feigned conversational acquaintanceship has come and gone. Now, hellos are reserved for those special few whose name, state of origin, room number, prospective major and preferred drink I know. These days I walk with headphones in, eyes down, and my once almost-acquaintances do the same.

In a span of two months, I met what seemed to be hundreds of overeager freshmen, each with a name that was often lost before it had even been fully said. We’d shake hands, have the usual conversation and — if the stars aligned just so — I’d see that person again, and we’d even begin talking to the point where — lo and behold — we’d become friends. The hope was that each handshake, each useless question, each forced laugh would result in one more person to consider a “friend.” So I collected the names and faces. I waved at friends of friends. I smiled at the guy whose name I’d forgotten and the girl who had picked up my pen that time. I thrust myself into conversations with an overenthusiastic, “Hi! I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Chelsea,” which now seems embarrassingly desperate. But in that two-month friend-collecting game, this breaking of social norms was overlooked, welcomed even, as another banal exchange at least meant another face to recognize in a school of so many strangers.

This period, though, extends only long enough to allow time to stray from forced OA ties to new, by-choice relationships. After that two-month window, a sporadic introduction becomes an atrocity. Cliques have been formed, friends made. The effectiveness of those conventional, introductory questions has worn off. I’ve already established my niche, and — let’s be honest — you’ve done the same.

But still the sudden extinction of those daily hellos is a bit disheartening. We freshmen would like to believe that people in this bubble actually know us. Chalk it up to insecurity, a cruel consequence of the freshman condition. I’m sure fast friends and subsequent, unprovoked fallouts are hardly a concern, or a care, for the seasoned upperclassman. But the panic of unpopularity is just a symptom of our freshman naivete. We know it’s a problem. We’re working on it.

So, freshmen, let’s calm our anxiety. Those nods aren’t bad. There is no hideous rumor circulating behind my back. It’s not that he noticed my minor freshman-fall weight gain. It’s simply that there is no need for halfhearted greetings and false acquaintanceships anymore. It seems rude to ask someone to repeat their name for the sixth time now that we’re two-and-a-half months into the year. So we can all rest easy. I’m sure John Doe doesn’t remember my name either. There is now a mutual, though unspoken, agreement of polite acknowledgement that requires neither of us to commit the name-asking sin.

With the friend-making hysteria subsided, I see that life has settled into a normalcy not so unlike high school. The need for a hefty entourage not so dire as I thought. We’ve settled into our lives, solidified our cliques, amassed regular dining partners and found our place among people that managed to bridge the gap from handshake to hangout. Those conversations that didn’t yield friendships have gone from hopeful hellos to cool nods, the deterioration only normal. In a couple years, I have no doubt that half the campus will be head-nod friends, and we’ll be pecking at the air with every other passerby. And perhaps the other half will be the waving, hugging, hello-ing type and the nod, then, will be a welcome break from our oh-so-popular upperclassman lives.