This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UNH chapter.
Being awkward is natural, everyone at some point in time has been stuck in an awkward situation where their next move is critical. Whether you it be with your best friend, a potential new bae or a complete stranger, one must be prepared with tactics to ease the situation and hopefully get past it with as little damage being done to their self esteem as possible.
So you just farted, that’s so awkward. Honestly, that’s probably in my eyes one of the most uncomfortable things to do, but none the less it happened and you need to do some serious damage control. If you’re kicken’ it with your ladies then girlfriend own it. If they can’t except your flatuaence than no one will. If you’re with a guy….DENY. DENY TILL YOU DIE! Please do to try to do a sly cough or laugh, because news flash it’s not as sly as you think. Its the oldest card in the deck, in that one cough you have confirmed that the situation is real and it happened. Instead pretend like it didn’t occur, continue so effortlessly that he rationalizes with himself that he was just hearing things.
The flash goes off, so even though you captured that hilarious snap chat of that kid in your psych class that your roommate hooked up with last weekend you now have an even greater situation on your hands. My best advice, use a tactic we have all been practicing since elementary school, stop drop and roll. First you must freeze and divert eye contact, look anywhere but that person, even if that means you’re staring at a blank wall. Next, crouch down a tad so your not sticking out like a sore thumb, until finally make a break for it.
Set the scene: It’s a sunny Monday morning, and you’re on your way to your first class of the day when all of a sudden you make eye contact with someone waving fervishly at you. You smile and wave back only to notice that that friendly wave was for the person behind you. AWKWARD. My initial reaction would be to dart down the road, but that is most definitely not the thing to do. Instead be confident. So what if you waved, you were being friendly. Make a joke out of it, it would have been more awkward if you kept your hater blockers on an ignored the situation.
Say you haven’t, but I know you have, you at one point have mistakenly walked into the wrong bathroom. It becomes an awkward situation because once you realize that you have fallen victim to this, you become a mess in utter panic worrying that someone has seen you. In this case just run, get out of there as fast as possible, because you think walking in there was the worst part, but now you have to walk right back out.
At the end of the day it is important to remember, you’re not Beyonce, we all have our awkward moments. Just take a deep breath, some deeper than most and we move on.