It’s the first day of class. You walk in and find your seat that will be yours for the rest of the semester. The rest of your new classmates file in and they do the little scan at the front of the classroom to see if any of their friends are here. They also find their seat and now you’re all just waiting for the professor. You’re all praying the same prayer: “Please God, do not make us do icebreakers.”
If you’ve been to only one class, you know what an icebreaker is. It’s where you have to share a few random facts about yourself in front of the whole class and listen to everyone do the same. Some professors have mercy on you all and only make you say your name and something like what year you are or what your major is. But other professors aren’t so nice. They’ll make you join a group or walk around the classroom, introducing yourself to people that you really have no desire to talk to.
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If you’re like me, and you are extremely awkward, especially in front of people I don’t know, then icebreakers are your own personal hell. I sit there and wonder which “interesting” fact I should share about myself. I don’t know what’s worse; having to stand in front of the class or getting partnered up and having to make small talk with a random stranger that you probably have nothing in common with.
It can be argued that icebreakers help with comfortability in class, but I believe that they just make everything so much worse. I make a complete idiot of myself the first time I’m meeting most of these people and that’s how I’ll be remembered by them until the end of the semester. OR, if you’re really lucky, you’ll have classes with some of these people for semesters to come. And then you have to share a totally different fact about yourself or they’ll think you only have that one cool thing about you.
Icebreakers: the worst possible thing that professors could make you do. If you have never had to do a class icebreaker, then consider yourself lucky. And if you have to do them in your future class, I’m praying for you and try to make yourself sound cooler than you are.
