My name is Mia Nicole Shaw, and I was born and raised in San Francisco, Calif. I’m thrilled to say that I’ll be coming across the bridge to Berkeley in the fall as part of the class of 2016! I plan to major in economics and minor in human rights. A vegetarian of seven years, I’m of mixed race, and I despise tomatoes. My hobbies include writing, singing, volunteering, meeting new people and learning new things!
That’s my spiel. Do you like it?
I don’t. If that’s what people take away from meeting me, then they still don’t know me at all. All they know is a bunch of trivial information that no one’s really interested in. And if that’s the last time I talk to them, I’ve really just wasted our time.
I really hadn’t realized just how difficult the process of meeting new people was until I came to a university as large as Berkeley and had to start doing it myself. To almost everyone, every day.
After the first few dozen times, I realized that there was something of a template for how almost each and every conversation I had when interacting with my fellow incoming freshmen would go:
Hi! It’s nice to meet you. Where are you from? Oh, wow, that’s so cool. What are you majoring in? What clubs are you in? That’s so cool. I’ve always been interested in that. Anyway, it’s been nice meeting you. Yeah, for sure, I’ll find you on Facebook! Okay. All right. Bye-bye.
You repeat information about yourself again and again and find yourself trying to establish yourself as “unique” as you’re stuck in a crowd of other “unique” faces. Suddenly, it isn’t really about meeting new people. Sure, we’re eager to meet everyone — but mostly that’s because we’re curious about how we’ll fit in. We all want others to see us for who we are and not just as another face in a crowd. We have to label ourselves, market ourselves. It’s easy to get swept away in the process of trying to meet as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. It isn’t about them so much as it is about you. It ends up being very … fake.
The repetitiveness of the small-talk conversations aren’t bad in and of themselves, so long as they’re followed up with something. If they’re used for the sake of an introduction to what will eventually lead to a meaningful friendship, fantastic. But it’s when they aren’t — and they often aren’t — that the artificiality of the conversation is absolutely useless.
And it’s only gotten worse with the Internet, with social networks. In my mind, the fact that these sites have gotten so popular just encourages people to not really know each other and to not necessarily feel the need to. As far as Facebook friends? For many a wannabe-popular kid, it’s all about quantity, not quality.
As someone who’s been in a small-talk relationship, let me tell you: Texting someone for three months doesn’t count as “getting to know them,” and knowing his favorite color, animal and food doesn’t mean you’re close. It just means you know that the crazy person you wish you knew was crazy prior to your trainwreck of a date likes green, anteaters and lasagna. These things aren’t always apparent.
For these reasons, I strongly disliked the template for a while. I thought that the artificiality of these relationships and the goal of racking up “friends” like collectibles was a little twisted. I’d like to say that I don’t mind it so much anymore and that I’ve gotten used to it with time. I’d like to say that it’s perfectly all right, because treating people in that way is clearly justified by the fast-paced modern world we now live in, because we’re all just trying to establish ourselves. But I can’t say that, because I’d be lying.
So tell me, how are you supposed to describe yourself in a few short sentences? What do you tell people? How can we make up for the fact that it is a challenging process, meeting new people? Trying to show them who you are?
Well, we could start by devoting time to building real relationships, by expressing genuine interest in the lives of others, by not treating human beings like a commodity. Each one of the people we meet has an interesting story to tell. We could take some time out of our busy lives to ask about it. Not do it over the Internet. Really listen. Maybe we can learn something that’s worth more than all the Facebook friends in the world.
My name is Mia Nicole Shaw, and I was born and raised in San Francisco, Calif. I’m quirky, eccentric, accepting and enthusiastic about the world. It’s nice to meet you. I’d really like to get to know you more.
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“Human Rights” is now a major at Cal? No wonder the UC program is having so many issues with their budgets…
It. Is. A. Minor.
mia, this hit home. i really liked what you wrote here. i’ve been traveling a lot this past year & was so frustrated by the endless hostel interactions of ‘where are you from/where have you been/where are you going’ that i ended up writing a list of better questions to ask strangers. always nice to see others out there who are as scared by the depersonalized falsity of internet relationships & technology in general & breadth over depth when it comes to all that.
Unattractive female columnists with average writing get 0 comments. Hot female columnists with average columnists get over 15 comments. Such is life. The moral? Don’t be ugly.
True that
Perhaps the number of readers are affected by her complexion, but the number of comments? I dont think so. It doesn’t matter if she wrote it naked, if she didn’t have anything good to say, I probably wouldn’t waste my time commenting since I couldn’t relate to what she was saying or it didn’t make think differently. Yet here I am, because I think she does have something to say, and if you’ve actually read anything she’s written in the past month or two instead of just counting the number of comments, you would know this is true.
Thank god! Someone sane!
I do in fact like your spiel. Your pitch contour, volume and proxemics in reciting it will determine whether I like you, too.
It’s just like every frat party ever, except instead of “I’ll find you on facebook,” at the end of the night, it’s “let’s dance and ‘hook up’ if you’re hot enough or I’m drunk enough.” It’s no surprise that you’re drawing ire, but I would point out that I was able to find some good friends that way…though the vast majority of the acquaintances I met in such a manner have long since fallen by the wayside. It’s a good way to meet people, which is exactly what it’s there for: filtering a large group of people for weirdos and then keeping in touch in case they do prove to be solid friend material. I will say that your little bio at the end is how about half of the freshman class would describe themselves if asked, so…eh. I’d say it’s no better than hearing the how and where. You’ve got to ask the off-kilter questions to get a better idea of people. I can’t say that I’ve met anyone here who had made it their goal to make as many friends as possible, though networking for universal party access is most definitely a full-time job. I had events scheduled every single night for my first summer here, but by the time spring semester had rolled around (I was a spring admit.), I was off the lists and it took at least a month to get back to what it had been. I had to babysit some friends at a few parties last semester, but times have changed. I have a set group of friends now, and I’m glad that I was able to choose them from a large pool of applicants. I wish you luck on the paper. Your writing’s pretty good, but…improve. Articles should shed insight on a topic, not just recycle age-old ideas like “people are counting friends on facebook.”
I did not know that Cal had a Human Rights degree.
It’s a minor, not a major.
Thanks, I get so focused on my own little area, that I often forget how many different areas to study exist at Cal. Looking at the classes related to the minor, I also forget that a department like English can cover so much ground other than just writing.
Mia, you’ll be here for four more years. There’s no rush for meeting new friends (with and without benefits). This place can be cold and impersonal but you don’t have to pledge to a sorority to fit in unless that’s what you really want. Instead, get to know people at your own pace. Just tell them your name, wait to hear their name, memorize it, and then slowly get to know them over time. You may bump into one of them at the ASUC book store and then you can chat for hours about favorite books. You may hate a classmate because he supports supply-side economics and then fall in love when you see him collecting donations for endangered baby polar bears. You may avoid the bubbly Lowell Asian girls who hang out in big groups but then become best friends with one of them three years later when the two of you campaign for improved human rights for Greek refugees in Germany.
so much Melegari in this.
Mia, food for thought (for you and all other entering freshmen):
i) The administration continually acts in bad faith towards all parties.
ii) UCPD operates with extreme deception, shamelessly lying to students and the public (among others).
iii) The Tang Center’s Counseling and Psychological Services unit is essentially the ‘useful idiot’ of the administration: under current federal law and UC policy, a reasonable expectation of privacy does not exist.
In short, the UC – its administration and its police force – cannot be trusted.
Taking any statement made by UC/UCPD at face value is a serious mistake.
Lol. Nutter’s pissed off.
Hey Mia,
Welcome to the Daily Cal. Nice to have you on board.
In regard to being a “pretentious bitch,” I thought you’d might get a kick out of this: http://www.dailycal.org/2012/06/03/a-tribute-to-our-online-commentators/
Take Care,
S.C.Woolf
SC Woolf equates ‘male, single and no job’ with ‘Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks’.
Does Woolf expect to be taken seriously after such propagandistic distortion?
FAIL.
Hey! I guess this means S.C. Woolf is male, single, and has no job.
you sound like a pretentious bitch
LOL, she’s only 18, meaning not so much a ‘pretentious bitch’ as simply young and wet behind the ears.
We’re at Cal. All of us are young and wet behind the ears.
I don’t get that same vibe, and you have to stop attacking the attractive women, because you think they will break your heart.