Thing Nine
Maybe this sounds lame, but I feel it was an accomplishment. Today my Thing goal was to make peace with my roommate.
This is the one I ended up sharing a room with, but she's very uncommunicative and the first couple days she was here we didn't say anything more than "Hi!" and the only other interaction was when I was really cold so I turned on the heat in the apartment and a few minutes later she came brusquely into the room and turned off the heat. I haven't been able to tell since if she is angry at me or just a quiet, uncommunicative person but I've been trying to be nice and make basic conversation.
It didn't help, I think, that the first time I met her boyfriend I said something that he might have taken as totally rude and snotty. It was intended totally neutrally but I get the vibe that he was Very Offended because ever since that first conversation where he was very pleasant and chatty while he was waiting in the living room for her to get ready and join him he hasn't said a single thing to me. What it was was that he was asking me what I studied and I told him education, and then educational psychology, and was trying to explain it tersely without going into too much detail.
"Oh," he said. "My brother studies math education. He's been working right now studying the Chinese teaching approach because they use a lot of group learning and stuff."
What I was thinking was "Wow, that's totally different than all of my personal experience. I wonder what on earth he could be talking about." What I actually said, dumbly, was "No they don't." I followed it up with "I taught in a school in Taiwan." He diplomatically ended with "Well, I think the stuff he's talking about is further inland."
Anyway, the point of that whole story is that maybe my roommate's boyfriend, and by extension my roommate, thinks I'm an insufferable rude snob. I broke all sorts of Utah rules by being blunt. I wasn't even intentionally being blunt this time.
And so my thing was to do everything I can to make sure she doesn't think I 'm a snob. So I've been trying to say pleasant things and ask innocuous questions when I get the chance. And I also invited her to have dinner tomorrow - I decided to make a roommate dinner because for four people who live in the same 200 square feet we really don't talk much. I hope that goes over well. And hopefully intentional and unintentional peace will be achieved.
This is the one I ended up sharing a room with, but she's very uncommunicative and the first couple days she was here we didn't say anything more than "Hi!" and the only other interaction was when I was really cold so I turned on the heat in the apartment and a few minutes later she came brusquely into the room and turned off the heat. I haven't been able to tell since if she is angry at me or just a quiet, uncommunicative person but I've been trying to be nice and make basic conversation.
It didn't help, I think, that the first time I met her boyfriend I said something that he might have taken as totally rude and snotty. It was intended totally neutrally but I get the vibe that he was Very Offended because ever since that first conversation where he was very pleasant and chatty while he was waiting in the living room for her to get ready and join him he hasn't said a single thing to me. What it was was that he was asking me what I studied and I told him education, and then educational psychology, and was trying to explain it tersely without going into too much detail.
"Oh," he said. "My brother studies math education. He's been working right now studying the Chinese teaching approach because they use a lot of group learning and stuff."
What I was thinking was "Wow, that's totally different than all of my personal experience. I wonder what on earth he could be talking about." What I actually said, dumbly, was "No they don't." I followed it up with "I taught in a school in Taiwan." He diplomatically ended with "Well, I think the stuff he's talking about is further inland."
Anyway, the point of that whole story is that maybe my roommate's boyfriend, and by extension my roommate, thinks I'm an insufferable rude snob. I broke all sorts of Utah rules by being blunt. I wasn't even intentionally being blunt this time.
And so my thing was to do everything I can to make sure she doesn't think I 'm a snob. So I've been trying to say pleasant things and ask innocuous questions when I get the chance. And I also invited her to have dinner tomorrow - I decided to make a roommate dinner because for four people who live in the same 200 square feet we really don't talk much. I hope that goes over well. And hopefully intentional and unintentional peace will be achieved.