This summer, I, a shy 16-year-old, went alone to Germany to live with strangers. As I waited to meet my first German hosts, I realized that these people knew almost nothing about me. If I greeted them boldly and talked nonstop, they would never know that wasn’t really “me.” And so I decided to test my hypothesis—could I become someone different? Apparently, I could! I experimented with being a giggly girl in a bikini, being 17 years old (although I discovered that you don’t get that much more respect for being a year older and lying to people who became close friends wasn’t as fun as it seemed), and grinning wildly at everyone who passed by. I could just decide who I wanted to be.
Near the end of my time in Germany, after a long day walking around Berlin, I sat down in a youth hostel bar. I was tired, but I tried to make conversation. It fizzled as the girls I was talking to turned their attention to some talkative college boys. Then, all of a sudden, a woman plopped down at the table. “How many pitchers of beer are you boys going to drink?” she asked, amused. Immediately, the attention of all seven boys turned in the direction of this 30-year-old professor from Texas as they practically assaulted her with questions. She made lively conversation with the whole table—me included. I stared in awe. I wanted to be that.
Back home in Ithaca and facing a new school year, I set about being a person with confidence who could make new friends with ease. I decided to tackle this in an infamously difficult place for making friends: the school lunchroom. Over the course of four weeks, I sat at eight different tables, accompanied most of the time by two friends, trying to discover the keys to becoming a social butterfly. As a fan of Humans of New York (HONY), a blog run by Brandon Stanton featuring impressively personal stories collected from strangers in NYC, I am attracted to the idea of meeting new people, listening to their stories, and figuring out what makes them tick. As my dad says, “Each person is a whole world.” Meeting new people is like exploring the solar system. On days when I successfully integrated myself into a new friend group for a period, I felt elated. Self-confident. Just plain happy. Over the years, I’ve spent quite a few lunch periods alone, and this was so much better. It’s not just me. One of my friends said, “[People] all have lives that are so different. It’s nice to get to know people I see every day and pass in the halls,” and the other commented, “[When sitting at new tables], you get to have conversations you wouldn’t normally have and connect with people that you wouldn’t, normally.” And even if you have a table of awesome friends to sit with, it could be an educational experience to make new ones. While you should be careful to keep your old friends, it’s so important as a human being to understand the other human beings who live on this planet, even if—or especially if—they have different opinions and philosophies.
For anyone daring enough to take the leap of joining a new table, start at the beginning. Ask if you can sit down. Or don’t. Sometimes, I knew the people a little bit, and didn’t feel the need. Although I was never directly refused, I can imagine that some tables would say “no” as a joking reaction to over-politeness, and it might be easier to just not ask—it’s on a case-by-case basis. Brandon Stanton of HONY has mastered this: the initial instant of intruding into the lives of strangers. He explains that it is important to be as calm and nonthreatening as possible, for example, by not approaching someone from behind or surprising them. After sitting down at a table, make sure to immediately say “hello” and draw attention to yourself—a tip I learned from the Texan professor in Berlin. Some people might automatically feel compelled to do this, but as an introvert at heart, I tend to let myself recede into the background and then get frustrated when I can’t work my way back into the foreground. Maybe your tablemates don’t even intend to ignore you, but having conversation with a shy person takes effort they might not be willing to invest, so start out by showing them that you know how to contribute to discussion. Then, ask them their names. It seems trivial, but using people’s names makes them feel that they are important to you. I thought I was bad at remembering names, but I tried to put in a conscious effort by asking them to spell their name, repeating it to myself, and using memorization techniques. I found it was a lot easier than I had imagined. Before, I think I simply hadn’t cared enough to remember. Conversation with people you don’t know is hard. The key here is to let your curiosity have full rein. Stanton says that it’s good to start with broad questions like, “What is your biggest struggle right now?” and use those answers as starting points to springboard into conversation, where you may learn something interestingly unique about that person or find some common ground. However, asking out of the blue “What is your biggest struggle?” is going to sound strange, so I try to be metacognitive about how I converse. If the way I say something is awkward, I say it differently next time and then make sure to learn from it. For example, the “struggle” question could be inserted into a conversation by prefacing it with “Ohmygoodness, I am really struggling right now with my precalc class. What is your biggest struggle?”
Think of conversation as an art that needs to be perfected and remember your basic manners: show that you’re listening and don’t interrupt. Overall, make sure to be yourself. Let them see what’s unique about you just as you want to know what’s unique about them. Don’t just be a friendly robot; be passionate and happy if you feel like it or grumble together about how horrible the world is. Just make sure to always be kind. Social butterflies see that everyone is human inside and love that humanity.
My commitment to sitting at different tables was bolstered by the companionship of my two open-minded friends. This impetus to branch out can be hard to find, though. My compatriots said that it was nerve-wracking and the thought, “What if they’re really rude?” often came up before sitting down. Ultimately, they said they wouldn’t have done it alone, and honestly, I’m not sure I would have either. One way to avoid this while still developing social skills is to skip the lunch room meet-and-greet and experiment on people in more relaxed situations; in class, in clubs, or just as you meet people in everyday life outside of school. I found that having developed a mind that was open to meeting new people, this attitude prevailed through my whole day, in gym class, for example, or at my dad’s bike shop. The lunch period, however, is a great place for uninterrupted conversation, and it’s such a shame to waste it.
There are a few things to keep in mind that might lessen any anxiety. First of all, choose a good table. Maybe even scout it for a few days until you are reassured that they are nice people. Frankly, it is really hard to sit at a table where everyone at the table has a different sex, or race, or is in a different grade. Maybe don’t start there. However, sitting at that table could be the most valuable experience you could get. It might seem easier to sit next to someone who is alone, but that too has its disadvantages. That person might be sitting alone because they have homework to do, or are just not feeling social that day and want to be left alone. Or, that person might be offended at your apparent pity of their “lame loner” status. To avoid this, don’t act like you’re doing them a favor by sitting with them, but instead, act like they’re doing you a favor. In the end, we are social creatures, and even though they might feel embarrassed, it usually makes someone’s day better, not worse, to make new friends.
Maybe we should change the system a little bit to make this easier. While I am proud of the IHS community for the fact that my friends and I were welcomed (with some degree of enthusiasm) at every table we joined, it might not always be the case. That was the experience of Natalie Hampton, a high-school junior from Sherman Oaks, California. At her school, people told her outright, “No, you can’t sit with us.” This experience led Natalie to create an app called “Sit With Us,” which quickly skyrocketed to viral fame in September after the release of an NPR article about it. According to the article, people can “Post ‘open lunches’ so that anyone who has the app and has nowhere to go can find a table and hopefully make some new friends…. You know that you’re not going to be rejected once you get to the table.” As soon as I saw the article, I downloaded the app but found that no one else at IHS was on it. I would encourage people to get the app so maybe we can create a community of people with “open tables” so that no one has to sit alone unless they want to. I got the amazing opportunity to interview Natalie Hampton herself about the app (to be published in the December 2016 issue).
Thank you, to all the people I sat with. Thank you, Texan professor. As I said excitedly to my best friend the day after “the experiment” started, “I’m a social butterfly now!” There isn’t some intrinsic quality to people that turns them into butterflies. You just need to open your eyes.
One day, maybe tomorrow, I will walk up to a table full of high-school boys. “How many bottles of Snapple a day do you guys drink?!” I’ll say. They’ll all look at me. And I’ll know just what to do.