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.

A Bullying Story

With so much access to social media these days it’s hard to keep kids in check. Growing up, at one point in my life, there was someone who did try to bully me…Only I never realized it until recently.

To me she was just a kid who didn’t like me for one reason or another, and was just very intent on trying to get everyone else to exclude me. Luckily for me, I had a good group of friends, and she was the outsider among us.

I never thought about it as bullying until the memory of this person came to me a couple of weeks ago and I remembered her apparent dislike of me or whatever it was, and I started to wonder, why did she not like me?

She was a new student at my small school that year. She was in the grade ahead of me and the year before I had been in a split grade class, so I had made friends with a few of the kids who were now in her class. Her, being a new student and a bit of a tomboy, didn’t fit in, and I remember it took a long time before she actually became friends with anyone in her class. I remember it taking the majority of the year or even a couple years after until she had a solid group of friends.

So before that happened, she was stuck trying to be friends with my group of friends. She wasn’t particularly friendly or out-going either, which made this change of schools thing a lot more difficult for her I think, and she didn’t know how to make friends.

Thinking back I think she was jealous of me. I don’t say this to be full of myself or anything like that but I do think she was jealous that I was clearly good friends with this group of people she wanted to be friends with who she was having a very difficult time making to like her. And here I was already friends with them, being younger, not in their class, or really having any sort of business talking to them, other than from already being friends with them. In elementary school, you forget how divided things are by age sometimes and I guess this is why she felt like I should’ve been the one who didn’t belong instead of her, but I did.

So because of this, she would try to make situations to exclude me, she would try to get rid of me, constantly ask me why I was there, and ask the others why I was around as well. She would ask why I didn’t have friends my own age and to go get my own. Of course I already had friends my own age, but those were my best friends and who I chose to spend my time with.

With her always doing these small things to bother me or exclude me, I naturally had my own ways of getting to her. I called her by a nickname she did not like, and was not particularly nice since she wasn’t to me. Even though I wasn’t nice to her though, I wouldn’t say that I bullied her like she had tried to bully me, because it was my way of standing up for myself because I was typically a pretty shy, quiet, weird little child. Whatever I did was a result of how she treated me, and I never did anything drastic or mean in that sense either. I think, in lieu of revenge, I just did my best to be an annoyance to her because I didn’t have it in me to be mean enough to do anything more and secretly I was trying to make her my friend too.

The fact that she didn’t like be made me want to change that. I would’ve tried to be her friend anyway, but she just seemed to want me gone. Or so I would think but then every once in a while, we would have a nice conversation or something like that. I never understood why we couldn’t be friends. I couldn’t understand why she was against me. But I suppose now it was because she couldn’t figure out how to make friends, and I couldn’t understand her need for me to be gone.

I think to an extent, we’re all guilty of something some form of bullying to point because we have all been in a situation of sorts at some time or another. While it may not be malicious, or intended, it is what it is. I’m only just surprised how long it’s taken me to realize what my own situation was in elementary school. It wasn’t the only one, but it was one of the only ones that directly involved me that was a continual thing.

I consider myself very lucky now that even back then, my friends really were my friends and weren’t easily influenced by this new student. Growing up can be very hard without having to deal with bullies. With is even worse. I’m lucky that it wasn’t a worse situation or something that I took to heart. I might’ve been a different person and I don’t know if I would’ve been able to go through severe bullying at a young age like that, which is what some young people do go through. Every day. I’m very thankful that I got off easy in comparison.

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.

How To Procrastinate Like A Pro

You realize you might be a good procrastinator now, but you could be even better. I, friends, will show you the way.

First off, don’t read the assignment sheet. If anything, take a glance, or quick skim, but don’t absorb any information. That way when you go to write your assignment in the few remaining wee hours of the morning, you’ll feel especially stressed and panicked, and really, it’s the only way you’ll know you’ll get it done.

Secondly only take mental notes, so you can stay extra unprepared. This is good. Then you have an excuse to text all your classmates at terrible times of the night, trying to figure out what is going on. If they didn’t like you before, I’m sure they’ll love you after this!

Third, don’t write any reminders about when the due date is, you don’t want to know, it’ll only ruin your week and all those fun plans you had.

Should you bother getting any work or notes prepared ahead of time like the keener you aren’t? No, this only adds to the stress and fun later when panicked. Also, now you don’t need to worry about losing those notes or making time to make them in the first place. You’re welcome.

Now all you need to do is stay occupied until the night before the assignment is due. This can virtually include anything and everything. Yes, anything. Want to go snowboarding? Do it. Feel like having an eating contest and making yourself sick? You’ve got time! Have you been meaning to getting around to having a t.v. marathon? Now is the PERFECT opportunity for it. Especially the day before the night the assignment is due, so you’ll tired and have to power through the sleep deprivation. This is an excellent reason for you to also take up the habit of drinking coffee. Or Energy drinks. Or coffee flavoured energy drinks. In this step, anything goes. You can do anything, be lazy or have a social life. The skies’ the limit!

Now, the weekend before it’s due, your classmates are starting to worry! But not you! 😉 You’re calm and under control, you’ve got all weekend and frankly, didn’t remember at all until now. Keep on keeping on.

As the weekend goes on, find other things to do to put your assignment off. Read you library book – It’s due in two weeks! Watch that movie on t.v., you’ve only seen it like 8.79 times but you still don’t know all the lines by heart! Get down to business, common!

It is now Sunday, and you’ve managed to get through the day, slacking off while the stress rises, knots build in your chest and the panic is making it hard for you to focus on anything and is making it harder and harder for you to breathe.  Now you know it’s time to get started. After supper though of course, you can’t work on an empty stomach!

Also, wait until after your favourite Sunday night soap because you still haven’t gotten around to obtaining the privileges of the PVR yet. It could make procrastinating harder if everything is pre-recorded for you to watch later when you actually have nothing going on in your life.

Now you’re ready to write! It’s definitely after 9 pm and your eyes are getting droopy. You’ve already done your typical Facebook and Twitter scans for the evening, but another five or six times couldn’t hurt though right?

While opening your blank Word document, it may occur to you that you don’t know what to write about. It’s time to go back and actually read the assignment. Actually see what your teacher has been talking about for the past 3 weeks. This is when you realize you need more information, and back to Facebook and Twitter you go, messaging everyone, because you don’t know who is still awake at this hour!

Finally some heaven-sent person has responded to you and now you’re back in business, time to start researching. Time to get distracted by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Facebook again, research a little more, go see if anyone is tweeting you, text that ‘special someone’ and check the time.

Oh no! You have to write pages about how thoroughly you know this topic and you know close to nothing and now it is nearly 12 am. It’s time to begin staring at the page, hoping your assignment will write itself. It won’t, but how will you know if you don’t try?

Since you have discovered no matter how hard you try, staring does nothing but dry out your eyes, it’s now time to take a quick 2-hour nap because you are exhausted or get down to business.

Assuming you get down to business, or get to it after napping, now it’s about 2 am at least and it’s time to get writing! You finally have enough motivation to work! You’re welcome, I know. Now you write anywhere from 20 minutes to the next 3 hours and just pump out the gold. After you’ve finished your definite masterpiece, it’s time to print.

Please note this is what your printer lives for. It is THE opportune time to jam, run out of ink, paper or just try to explode. But usually the printer will realize that this is a bad time for printing dramas and therefore will *usually* cooperate.

OH BOY-O! You sir or madame have just printed your assignment! Apart from getting up in the morning and handing it in you are now done. Give yourself a pat on the back, and get some rest while you still can! Be prepared for the long crappy day ahead since the chances of you running late, the dog eating your homework, forgetting your lunch, and falling asleep in class are way likely. As long as you remember to put on clothes, eat and maybe brush your teeth, you still can make it through your day relatively unscathed!

Now that you know how to procrastinate like a pro, put your new-found skills to the test and put off using them!

*please note this can also be a guide for everything you should not do. Especially because it shows in your work, and your teacher probably won’t like it as much if you put legitimate time and effort into the assignment*