Being awkward: an art form

While I do not suffer from uncomfortable silences or chronic foot-in-the-mouth syndrome, people can expect some weird mumbling, bizarre sleep patterns and child like antics followed by long periods of hibernation from me. These wonderful traits are some of the many things that have made me the foul-mouthed, anti-social little weirdo that everybody has come to know and love.

Being awkward is a burden I have had to bear for so long that I now look at it almost like a bonafide talent. A prime example of my skill set can be observed through the events of my day. You see, at my college, whenever you sign up for classes, you instead sign up for an interview with the professor and decide from there if you still want to pursue it. The process is flawless, yet my execution was not the best. 

I showed up to the wrong place for my first interview and then on my way to finding the right location, I stopped at an ice cream truck and treated myself to some soft serve chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles that I then had to scarf down before the meeting. That interview went fine, but the next one could have gone better.

To be fair, I think that very little of this could have been avoided. I went to go and sign up for a class that I was interested in. However, when I went to sign up for the class, I discovered that I did not bring a pen; the one thing that you actually need when you go to sign up for something. I therefore borrowed one from the man next door who was not wearing shoes (not an important detail). He loaned me a pen and when I leaned against the door to sign my name, I fell into the room that a good-looking professor was actually occupying. He asked me if I had an interview scheduled for that very moment and when I told him no I did not he said that it was fine and I could interview with the girl whose time it was. 

I then found myself sitting opposite a girl who was super prepared for her interview, while I was trying to not look like I was on drugs. I would have been super composed during the interview had it not been for one small detail. I was as hot as a supernova the entire time.

Despite growing up in the deep south, about twenty minutes above Florida, I was sweating like a post-menopausal woman. I can probably blame this on the lovely ensemble I had on. In order to beat the heat, I decided to wear the thin shirt that I slept in the last few nights, but did not think through the solid black, skin-tight skinny jeans I put on, which seemed to cancel out the thin t-shirt. There also is no A/C here and the day was so humid it felt like I was swimming. All I could think about was how sticky I was becoming and how my two functioning brain cells were desperately groping for a coherent sentence. 

After the interview was over, I returned the pen to the barefoot man next door, who looked at me like I was a leper, and then scampered off. I decided that the reason I did not feel well, aside from catching the heat stroke that has been going around, was the fact that I needed food. I then treated myself to a well-balanced meal of chicken tenders, french fries and mozzarella sticks. I did not actually eat the french fries, but instead brought them to my next interview, thinking that the teacher would want them. I didn’t exactly intend to bribe her, but thought that maybe she had been working hard all day and wanted to nibble on my friendship fries. 

I went to see my next professor, who waved me in while another girl finished up her interview and neither of them wanted my friendship fries. I shamelessly asked several questions, though it was abundantly clear that perhaps I did not know what I was talking about. After making a definite impression, I walked back to my dorm room and offered most of the people that I passed some of my pity fries. Nobody wanted them and sadly they ended up in the trash. 

The moral of this story is: do not care if you sweat all over people, ask for a pen if you forget yours, eat soft serve ice cream in front of them, ask them dumb questions or generously offer them fries, even in the face of rejection. My day still rocked, despite all of the awkwardness.