Friendliness = Friends

Since entering college…or maybe even as early as when I got my first job (yay me!) at the beginning of summer, I feel like I’ve been meeting people non-stop!

I had to meet my various new co-workers. I got to meet the customers. The regulars. I’ve gotten to talk to people I actually went to high school with, who I never actually spoke a word to until they walked into the line of my till.

Going into college, I began meeting my instructors, my classmates, my future classmates, and people I may possibly be working with or for in the not-so-distant future.

Now with meeting all of these new people, I think I feel confidently enough to say that I’ve made a few friends at least! (If I hadn’t, that would be sort of sad :(…) Through these new friends, I’ve met their friends, their boyfriends and so on.

Now if you’re still reading, you are probably wondering where this is going. So where is this going? I suppose what I am trying to say is that you want to be open to the opportunity of meeting new people where ever you go.

Some of the customers we get, and even some of my regulars, I would say I have a good friendly relationship (or acquaintanceship should I say?) with them, which I wouldn’t have had otherwise if I hadn’t tried to be a nice friendly person and make conversation.

You’ll also make friends with some of your co-workers! While you may not like everyone (that’s okay!) you probably will be spending a lot of time with your co-workers, and with that you probably should try to get along with them. Who knows, you might become really good friends with some of them! I did. You can always find a way to make friends, no matter the situation you’re in. Now me and her like super tight, and we even have street nicknames for each other (Yes we are THAT cool. No worries, I know y’all are jelling).

I also wouldn’t have gotten to know those people I hadn’t said a thing to in high school had we not asked one another how school was going and etc. While some of these things may just be out of formalities, sometimes okay or even nice or good things can lead from them.

So just be open for opportunity and even on the look-out for it.

For example, while I don’t know many people outside of my program, or even my class, I have made a friend in business! How? We met in the bathroom when I dropped my phone and we both gasped because I didn’t have a case on it (note: I have bought two cheap cases since but I’m not crazy about them so my phone is naked once more).

She started talking to me and we had a good conversation. After that we’ve run into each other a few more times around the campus and even in the bathroom again! Even though we’re not like bff’s, you don’t have to be everyone’s best friend. Just be friendly and pick up friends along your way!

And she is not the only friend I’ve made. I am an avid consumer of food because I human being who rarely brings lunch and so I often end up buying food or snacks and such and often go to the places where you can buy food on campus. Did I lose you? Well if I have, I’m trying to tell you I’ve made friends with the cashiers.

Being a cashier myself, I know how someone with a bad attitude can be a huge pain. Customer service jobs require you to be nice to everyone but when a customer makes it easy for you to give them quality service, well it makes your day easier. So regardless of whatever’s going on I always try to be super nice to cashiers and be kinda chatty and when you buy food as often as I do, you get to be on a first name basis with the employees. Don’t be afraid to talk to them or strike up a conversation! If the store is slow, they won’t mind talking! Cashiering is boring when the store is empty. If it’s busy though, save any heart to heart conversations for another day.

You can also meet friends and network through speakers who talk at seminars. If that’s a thing you do or if you’re like me and it’s one of your classes, go talk to them afterwards. sometimes they might be in a rush but introduce yourself and ask any questions you had! They’ll love knowing that someone was interesting in what they had to say and it’s a great way to get your own name out there.

Another way of meeting people, though super common, is through friends you already have! It’s fantastic because sometimes you may already have common interests if they’re friends with your friend. In a way it’s like a blind (friendship) date. You may or may not like each other. You may or may not get along. You might hit it off and there might be awkward gaps of no conversation. The beauty of it though is that it’s completely different every time. And every time it’s a success, you now have a slightly larger group of friends to go out with and have fun!

So my point being is just be happy and friendly wherever you go and trails of friends shall follow! Don’t fret if there’s a bad day and you feel awkward and antisocial – I get those days all the time. The thing is to power through those days and treat every day different. Go in with great expectations. If you assume everyone in the room hates you, and don’t try talking to them out of fear that they do, then they simply won’t know you and it’ll be so much harder to find opportunities to be friendly later if there’s a stereotype of you being standoffish or not talkative!

Don’t fear that people won’t like you. Some will, some won’t. It happens. But if you don’t try you might not find the kind of friends who truly matter.

P.S. Below is a link to this hilarious video my best friend showed me. It’s awesome. Sharing videos like this or even doing something crazy like this are also fun ways to make new friends. Enjoy.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Growing up, we make friends, we make enemies and we make awkward acquaintances. Growing up we often don’t realize how important these various relationships are.

Obviously we try to treat others nicely, and hope they treat us like so in return and if not….well, as they say ‘what goes around comes around,’ but as we grow older we start realizing that ‘Hey maybe I should’ve been nicer’ or ‘I should’ve been a better friend’ or just generally ‘I should’ve behaved differently in that situation.’ When we mature and become adults and get jobs we begin to see how these relationships can play a huge role in our lives when it comes to applying for a job or asking for a favour of similar importance. If someone you’ve previously engaged with is involved with that company or organization, well why look at your resume, when they have a first hand reference?

This can be good or bad. They can and should ask that person what their experience was like knowing or working with you. If you didn’t try very hard to get along with them, they have every right to give you a bad review and therefore ruin any chance you had at landing the job.

This could also be a good experience though. If said person is your best friend, they can give you the best reference you would’t ever be able to ask of someone to give for you. Because that person knows you, the employer will take into serious consideration what their current employee says about you since they have first hand experience working with you. Employers of course love this, because they have a credible, reliable source telling them the potential risk they are taking hiring someone will hopefully be one well worth it hiring you because of a good reference. Or not-so-much worth the risk if they give you a bad review.

So remember, next time you plan on making friends, enemies,or acquaintances, they could be influencing your future employer. Do you really want to lose job opportunities over trivial things?

Juggling Isn’t Just For Clowns

As a CreCommer, you would know that we have speakers at seminars every week. Every week it seems like there are a few reoccurring themes. One is being able to juggle. Being able to juggle a schedule, people, along with all other aspects of your life – it really is a talent of its own.

Not everyone knows how to juggle or manage their time, and it’s obvious when it comes to working with other people, handing projects in or even for meeting a friend somewhere to hang out. If you don’t have this skill, you’ll not only suffer in school, but in work as well. It’ll also effect your reliability, and how others perceive you, and perhaps even your credibility.

This is something that is so important to learn how to do, yet we’re never directly taught it, or made aware of it. You may learn you need to do your homework now so you won’t hand things in late or have mountains of catching up to do in your school work but we aren’t being told this is time management when we chose or chose not to do our homework and go to our friend’s house instead.

You could also even go as far to say that anything we do in a day we’re learning or unlearning how to discipline ourselves and use time management and the art of learning to juggle different things going on in our busy and very chaotic lives.

It’s something that I don’t think has enough emphasis because once we do get out into the real world, we won’t just be busy anymore – we’ll become full-time jugglers, much like the speakers we see every week. Are we prepared for this? Maybe, some of may be already, and some might be by the time we finish CreComm. Maybe we won’t want to be when we realize that we’ll continue being this busy or even busier when the time comes. Going into this, we somewhat expected it. To what extent, I don’t know. My point being though that whether we have the skill now or not doesn’t matter because if we don’t, soon or later we will need it, and desperately. It’s vital.

Cyclists Versus Drivers

Living in Manitoba, one is especially privy to hearing the numerous arguments that drivers make about cyclists and pedestrians, as well as the ones cyclists make about drivers, and witnessing it all as one drives or cycles down the streets of Winnipeg. Why is that?

It’s an ongoing cycle. Drivers just want to get to where they’re going, and get there fast. They don’t want to drive behind slow cyclists or having to move halfway into another lane to avoid hitting one, just so they can pass them. They also hate treating cyclists like a vehicle when they’re cyclists. Drivers resent cyclists being allowed on the road because they have to be tolerant of them – as we all know you can’t just pretend that a cyclist isn’t there and run them over.

Cyclists in turn don’t like when drivers aren’t considerate of them on the road and try running them down. They also don’t like it when drivers ignore their presence and try driving like they aren’t there, as that usually ends up with someone getting hit. Cyclists are, by law, on the streets instead of the sidewalks. They don’t have much of a choice, and I’m sure don’t like feeling in the way on the road. But no one has a choice and so drivers should at least respect that and give them their space when driving so they don’t feel like their life’s endangered when cycling.

What doesn’t help this is when drivers don’t bother to be considerate of cyclists, and don’t move over or almost kill them by ignoring their presence on the street. It’s also unhelpful is when cyclists ignore all laws of the road by driving through red lights, riding the wrong way on a one-way and dodging around slow-moving vehicles, never mind switching back and forth from the streets to the sidewalks believing they have the right of way at all times and thinking drivers will yield for them when breaking all said laws. They won’t if they can avoid it, even if that’s a near life and death situation for said cyclist.

But when neither party seems willing to be considerate of each other is when we face most of these problems that occur every day. Wouldn’t it just be easier if drivers shared the road instead of trying to run cyclists into the ditch and cyclists did their best to keep up with traffic and abide by the laws? I think so. If they both tried, rather than accusing and fighting as to who has the right to drive where, driving and cycling in Winnipeg might actually be nice, as opposed to stressful and aggravating.

As a driver, I can accept that cyclists have a right to be on the road. What makes it hard is when all of this is going on and no one is willing to give in. Unfortunately, the streets will only be better if everyone cooperates, and at least tries to get along. At least until then, we could all try to pretend and you know, not run over any more cyclists. They aren’t exactly made out of metal…

Internet Trolls and Why We Hate Them

I must say, I really hate Internet trolls. Yes, sometimes trolls can be very hilarious, especially when proving some dumb or ignorant commenter very, very wrong, in a genius way. That I can appreciate. What is aggravating though is when trolls go looking for an internet war and just start them for no reason other than pure boredom. It’s gets old fast and is pointless. Boredom aside, it’s overall senseless to do. Why would you want to go around pissing people off and making yourself look bad in the process? I don’t know.

Honestly, trollers are so ridiculous. They wasting their own time and everyone else’s and for what? To get banned from networking sites or have their accounts removed because they’re bothering everyone. Yes, because that’s SO cool. Cyber-bullying is where it’s at these days, where no one can touch you. Not. You think you look awesome for picking on someone just because you can? Or for starting an argument you have no reason to start or get into? You don’t. You feel like saying you hate this singer or that on their fan sites? Don’t. You’re honestly just making an asshole of yourself. I get that we’re all entitled to opinions, and I am so for that, being so opinionated myself, but there’s no need to go around stirring up shit and forcing your opinion on others. Everyone has their own opinions and sometimes you just won’t be able to change someone’s mind about something. It’s okay, because they probably already know of your apparent dislike of Justin Bieber or country music or that last film Johnny Depp starred in. You don’t need to harass people about it, or bother them for liking something you don’t. Looking for a good debate? Yeah, sure I’m all for that, just stop looking for fights and being idiotic on the internet. Please and thank you.

Bronies: They actually exist.

So on my way to the library today, to write a blog post, you know what I saw? I passed another student sitting working on his laptop with a My Little Pony screen saver. I probably paused a moment before moving on and thinking “I just saw a brony.”

For those of you who haven’t heard about bronies, they are adult male fans of the popular children’s show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Basically it’s about ponies who are friends who teach values about friendship. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, I  was very surprised to say the least. Luckily not shocked enough to stop and gape and cause some sort of scene, but still. This has probably been my first known brony encounter, and while I am sure there may be more, it’s always such a surprise when confronted with something that I wouldn’t expect out of anyone I know, or may meet. I thought this was simply outrageous because, like most things you might see on the internet, it’s something that you wouldn’t take seriously. I didn’t expect to ever see one.

I think the phenomenon of bronies are actually pretty interesting, if not a little funny, since one would not normally expect full-grown men to watch a children’s show, nevermind one that is more targeted to a female audience, but nonetheless I think it’s very neat. I like that bronies aren’t afraid to admit it their love for the show, when, let’s face it, when we were all younger, this might have been the kind of thing you might get made fun of for liking. Sad as that is, it is reality, which is why seeing a brony makes me proud of them in a way, for being so honest about what they like or think is cool as an individual and to just be themselves, because I think we genuinely don’t get to see enough of that these days.

We don’t get the treat of seeing real representations of most people because so many people are afraid to stand out in a crowd, and I think people who can successful do that are really great and a good example for anyone to look up to. But even if bronies are becoming a trend, I still think it requires a certain level of confidence, so congrats! Keep on owning it.