Bethel University

Having been homeschooled for the majority of my life, being in a classroom at Bethel University has definitely been more of an adjustment for me than is probably normal for freshmen.  Let's be honest here: being on a campus with 6,000 strangers really isn't that bad.  I mean, absolutely NONE of them know you!  Not only that, but none of them notice you at all or even care what the heck you are wearing, doing, and saying.  And that's a relief when you are wandering around trying to find the rather elusive "AC 305" classroom.  After all, no one's going to notice if you happen to pass by the same area 2 or 4 times.

But I, of course, am not near lucky enough to be on a campus with 6,000 strangers.  No, I happen to be on a campus with about 5,990 strangers and approximately 10 people I know.  However, on my first day on at Bethel, I was blissfully unaware of this harsh reality.  

So here I am, wandering up the stairs, still looking for AC 305, when my lovely little dream of wandering unseen among strangers is shattered.  A voice says, "Since when do you go here?" 

I turn to see, to my dismay, one of those people. Which means that I'm about to have one of those conversations.  It was one of those people who I know just well enough that I can't pretend I don't know him, but not well enough that I'd be able to converse with him freely.  But here I was, unwittingly forced into conversation with him.  I had to make the best of the situation. 

So I, of course, awkwardly smiled and, in the end, managed to survive a completely pointless conversation about Welcome Week (which I missed and apparently should have attended), and other such boring topics as came to mind.  I was able to excuse myself relatively discreetly via some lame excuse about needing to get to my class (which didn't start for 20 minutes). 

But that, cats and kittens, was only the beginning.  I proceeded to awkwardly pass, make eye contact with, or see more people that I knew than I ever could have expected. Now, it's not that I dislike any of these people about whom I am so blatantly complaining.  All of them are extraordinarily nice, and some of them I think I would get along with quite well if I spent more time with them.  However, the fact remains that, every time I make eye contact with one of them, I feel obligated to stop and have a conversation.  If I was one of those crazy extroverted weirdos who allegedly enjoy small-talk, I would probably think something like, "Oh joy! I get to go and talk to people I barely know about things that don't matter at all.  Even better, I probably get to laugh at awkward jokes that aren't even funny, and other such completely enjoyable things!!" As it is, my thought process is generally something more along the lines of, "Crap.  What's the easiest and fastest way to get out of this situation while still maintaining a relatively good relationship with the person?"

It's not that I'm opposed to making friends... I just really hate small-talk, especially if it's already awkward to talk to that person in the first place.  

Whose demented idea of a joke is it to send a homeschooled introvert to Bethel University, where she is likely to get lost, run into people with whom she has to make small-talk, and probably something else even worse that I haven't even encountered yet?  Like really?

On the plus side, I'm sure God finds this all very entertaining.