I was sitting in my Writing 2010 when my Professor announced we would be doing a peer review in class that day.
YES!!
This was the perfect opportunity for me to start talking to the cute Frat boy I had been gawking at since the beginning of the semester. You can imagine how disheartened I was when it was announced that my professor would be choosing our partners for us. I watched the scrawny boy with dark brown hair raise his hand as my professor called the name of who was to be my partner.
Great.
I walked towards my peer who addressed his name once again as he handed me his work. I reviewed the work and sat astonished by its beauty. As we quickly gave our feedback with time to spare I was worried about the awkward silence that was surely going to approach. I mean, after all he was the boy who liked to read. That automatically implied awkwardness… right? We sat for maybe five seconds before he leaped into asking me questions I had never been asked and discussing why he was afraid of bicycles. He made me laugh SO hard. This was one of the good ones, and then I wondered….
How many wonders in life had I missed simply because of my fear of wandering outside my personal blanket of security?
It was then that I promised myself I wasn’t going to do what Rebecca Olsen would “normally do.” I was going to sit by the 60-year-old woman in my math class. I was going to apply for a job I was sure I wouldn’t get the position for. I was going to befriend the kid who was overly obsessed with the Kardashian’s. (Love you Cory) I was going to be different, do different.
So I guess all my saying is: Try the little Indian restaurant down the street, have a conversation with the stranger on the bus, checkout the book about the theory of dinosaur extinction, and get to know the quirky kid in your class. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.