Since when did silence bring awkwardness?
The other day, on my first day of school, in my high school in the suburbs, my first period class was Sociology. (Honestly, I had no idea what sociology was until the first reading, my brother was the one that told me to take this class.) Every single class I have ever had-ever-always started off the same way. Teacher X states his/her name, a little bit about themselves, do the "name game" and then immediately start learning information that will be on the final at the end of the semester. This class, however, was completely different. Instead of my teacher getting the ball rolling, he just sat down at a random desk, and was silent. His silence rippled off to the rest of the class and no one knew what to do. Some made "this is awkward jokes" others found a friend from across the room and gave the "wth" glare...
But why was that so weird? Why was this silence so awkward? I have to admit, it threw me off guard but I wasn't really sure why. Then, I started thinking about the big picture. Some would say that the 21st century revolves around technology. Always in the background there is music playing off a computer or MP3 player, a T.V program on in the background etc; I couldn't remember the last time there was a pure silence.
Another reason why the the silence became awkward could be because we are trained what to expect out of school. We, as students, expect the teacher to immediately jump into details right away, and memorize the information from there on. We are trained to memorize, but not to absorb the information. I used to think I had a great teacher. He crammed info in my brain and then the next day we would have a mini quiz on it to see what we learned. But I now see that I didn't learn anything, I memorized. It makes me wonder- am I a scholar or a student? A scholar, to me, is one that absorbs information, and a student is one that memorizes it.
Crap. I feel like Alice, and I am going further and further down the rabbit whole-but in a good way.
-Katie
I can't remember the last time there was silence either! You bring up such a great point with the scholar/student comment! Go Katie!
ReplyDeleteBut were you thinking sociologically because of what you thought during the silence? Remember in Roseto, he had an idea but was completely wrong? Well were you thinking something (about the awkwardness) and it was just a wrong idea? I think Sal did it to make us understand that we already think sociologically. So maybe you knew more about sociology than you thought you did?
ReplyDeleteAnd I like your comment about Student/Scholar. We are trained at our school to be students when we should be focusing on the scholar part!
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteI think I get what you are getting at. lol. Okay, at first I thought it was all about technology. That the technology created an endless noise and therefore it was awkward to have silence. But then I realized that there was another layer to this. Another reason it was awkward was because of this idea that we memorize or have an expectation of what is the "norm."
Hello Katie!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought about the silence being awkward just because it was completely silent. Even right now as I'm sitting alone in my room I have music playing. I remember sitting 2 seats away from you on the day and kinda looking at you like, "okay, Katie, you're the only one I know personally in this class, and you're 2 seats away from me so I can't even whisper a little with you during the strange silence". It was def a great/interesting way to start off our sociology course though!
Hey Alice ;-),
ReplyDeleteSeems to be going well so far! I agree with Caitlin too. Nice blog post!