College: the years where you start exploring yourself and exploring your sexuality, or for other girls like me, exploring the intensity of your awkwardness. You probably thought this was a small tick that was going to go away in high school, right? Wrong! High school has denied you of that right to see what is actually out there, meaning you start discovering different personalities, you start seeing more diverse faces, and some chemical in your body warns your lower regions that you are attracted to someone. That is when the full symptoms of awkwardness is released. Interested in how we cope? Here are seven habits of an awkward college girl.
1. The Invisible Person Hand Wave
This is the move that happens usually during class changes or special events. When you see someone you know, (whether it’s that person in our bio class we see once in a while or that person that you think is very attractive, but you’re only at the friend level so far), you decide to wave, but it turns out that the other person was not waving at you but waving at the person behind you. Those of us who suffer from awkwardness have too much pride to look dumb, so we just wave and start a conversation with an invisible person.
2. The “destroy everything in your path” Move
This usually happens when someone obnoxiously cute talks to you for a second, either to ask you a simple question or to ask you to hang out later. We (awkward people) start to immediately panic, so when the conversation ends, we walk away without looking at anything and destroy everything in our path. This happens even if we are looking at the direction we are walking in, since we are too busy planning a delusional wedding, because if he is talking to you, he’s basically proposing.
3. The “holding your breath and standing still” Elevator Move
We hate that moment when someone comes on the elevator, and it’s usually just you and them. The intensity increases when it’s someone who conjures the chemicals in your body that are in charge of attraction. Our only solution is to turn off our music because we’re too scared they will hear it. We also hold our breath because we don’t want anyone thinking we have breathing problems, and we just look straight because eye contact will be the end of us.
4. The Slip and Find
This is what we do when we slip and fall in public. We refuse to be caught ‘slippin’, so we will say that we are looking for an earring that we saw fall on the ground or a flash drive that we dropped. It will usually be a small item that is hard to track down that we will describe to make it more believable, and no, the whole pretending to dance on the ground when falling move does not diffuse the tension. It just makes it greater, so we go to the “I lost something on the ground” route.
5. Discreet Bathroom Use
No one likes being heard while using the bathroom. It’s just awkward. What we usually do is wait for everyone to get out of the bathroom before using it, so yes, we will wait for more than ten minutes, if that is what it takes. If the bathroom is filled with people making lots of noise, then we will use the bathroom at the highest point of noise. This will make it easier because it will diminish a single noise because it’s overlapped by many. I call that smart thinking.
6. The “Stalker Friend” Move
This is when a friend asks you to come to an event with them or hang out with them, in which all the people there are your friend’s friends. We will stick to our friends like a creepy stalker because we are too afraid to get in a situation in which we are left alone with people that we don’t know, because after the short conversation that is had with the stranger, a long period of silence will follow, and that terrifies us.
7. The Quick Turn Around
This is when you see a happy couple in public holding hands or sucking each other’s faces. We feel like we are invading their privacy, so the second we see human intimacy, we either do a face turn so quick you can hear a neck crack, or we walk away. The walking away move sometimes comes from bitterness of being single as hell, so an occasional eye role will happen too.
These are some of the many ways in which we cope with awkward situations. Who’s to say this will get worse once we face the real world? What we do know is that what terrifies us the most is being called out on it, so it is rare to catch any awkward people slipping up and elongating the awkwardness. If it comes to that, then all hope is lost.