https://padlet.com/hise421/uj1ptqdvwat6fk98 Meeting New People en-us 2020-06-10 21:32:37 UTC 2026-02-07 10:00:03 UTC hello@padlet.com hise421 https://padlet.com/hise421/uj1ptqdvwat6fk98/wish/629476056 Meeting new people is honestly kind of scary in my opinion. I’ve barely had the ability to socialize with people I don’t know. What’s weird is when I don’t realize I’m having a conversation with someone I don’t know, we become friends. But when I know I’m trying to start a conversation with someone, I get incredibly awkward and I have nothing to talk about. Here’s a story about the time I became friends with someone I’ve known since Kindergarten, but we both forgot our friendship existed because she moved away.

I was in kindergarten when I became friends with this girl. She talked a lot about fashion and was always incredibly cheerful all the time. I knew a lot of people in kindergarten, but she was one of the main people I’d play around with. She was there in first grade but ended up moving in the second grade. Even I forgot she moved away. When it got to around the middle of 4th grade my teacher had announced that there would be a new female student. At first I thought I didn’t know who she was until the girl introduced herself to the class. I was in complete shock that I’d forgotten about one of my friends from kindergarten. I wanted to see if she remembered me like I remembered her, so after we all completed our assignments and we were turning it in, I decided to wait when she was finished and would go into line so I could talk to her without making it seem like I was trying to be a distraction.

I walked about ten seconds after she started walking into line. I decided not to think about what I should talk about because I knew that it’d get awkward afterwards. “So you went to this School in Kindergarten?” I asked. “Yeah. But I don’t remember any of the kids I was friends with in Kindergarten, so I wanna try and meet them!” she looked incredibly excited when she said that. “Well I think I was friends with you in Kindergarten. Were you in Mrs. H’s class?” I said, smiling. “Yes I was! Wow I can’t believe I just met one of my former classmates,” she sighed, relieved. We started having conversations and I talked about the times we had together when we were younger, she slowly started to remember who I was. 

When we got to the front of the line, our teacher smiled and said “It looks like you two remember each other. Do you wanna work on more of the assignments together at a desk and catch up more?” and we both looked at each other. I wanted her to say yes, but I didn’t want to force anything. “We can, but only if you want to.” I said, trying not to look like I really wanted to. “Yeah I’ll do that!” she smiled at me and pointed to her desk, “We can sit at mine since there’s a ton of space on it.” and I agreed. “Just make sure you get some of the work done because I don’t want you to fall behind,” our teacher reminded us. So we decided to talk as we did our work. She was so far the only friend I remembered from kindergarten.

This is the second story, except this is a story where I failed to socialize with someone because I thought about what the conversation was going to be about too much and made it kind of awkward.

I think I was in the sixth grade when this happened. I was trying to become friends with two other girls because my other friends weren’t at school at the time and they were the only friends I hung out with. These two girls also didn’t really socialize with other people, which made me feel kinda dumb later on. One girl was in my homeroom class and the other girl wasn’t. “Hey. Do you guys want some?” I asked, holding out my candy. They looked at each other, kind of debating on if they wanted to have a conversation with me or not. Which, I understand since they rarely know me and I’m kind of an outgoing person, but they stuck to themselves. I know a lot of people, but I only socialize with a certain amount of them.

They looked at me and smiled, “Yeah we’ll have some.” they took four pieces and I didn’t think much of it because I had more in my bag. I thought about what I should say to them to start the conversation off. “What class periods do you guys have today? I have English, Math, PE and then Social Studies.” I tried to keep the conversation lasting, but instead it took like, two seconds for them to finish listing the classes they had! I didn’t really think about what I was going to say after that so we all stood there in silence. 

I just said “I’m gonna go and check if my friends are here,” super quietly and I walked away making it seem like my friends were there. But the ones that were here were busy playing games and were not the ones that would joke around with me and talk to me. So I ended up kind of staying there talking to the gaming kids. They were all super hyped up about some of their games. And then my other friend arrived, so I got super excited. We ended up walking around school and having conversations about what we should do after school. Then more of my friends arrived, and then our teacher arrived. So now we were all sitting in class talking about dumb things we did when we were younger and joking around about unimportant things. Our teacher never really liked us, but we knew he secretly enjoyed our loudness.

Meeting new people is very hard especially since I’m an introvert. I have been trying to become an extrovert to improve my social skills. I wanted to write about the experiences I’ve had when making friends and my attempts at being social because I want people to know that they don’t need to go all out when meeting someone new.

Overcoming fears is difficult for me because I’m the kind of person who definitely would be too scared to overcome it. I learned that socializing with people brings joy to you and the other person. Sometimes it doesn't bring joy. Maybe it brings pain to some people, maybe it makes people irritated or not in the mood. ]]> 2020-06-16 19:22:56 UTC https://padlet.com/hise421/uj1ptqdvwat6fk98/wish/629476056