I distinctly remember my French teacher in high school telling our class that you weren’t an adult when you learned to speak up, you were an adult when you learned to shut up.
As a young adult, shockingly I find myself surrounded by other young adults. Also, I seem to frequently find myself annoyed. Perhaps I am bad-tempered, or perhaps I have observed a problem that I am in the midst of.
College students seem to have this notion that everything they say is extremely unique, and that everyone around them should hear whatever it is they are thinking. Brace yourselves, my peers, for I am about to deliver a blow equivalent to the realization that your parents lied to you about Santa Claus; you don’t have to respond to everything that someone says! Take a second to recover after reading that.
Okay, now that you’ve hopefully processed that a little bit, here is my take. Everyone has unique interests and ideas, there is no denying that. And there is a time and a place to express said uniqueness and when it is that time, and you are in that place, please seize the opportunity to express yourself. However, the problem arises when someone attempts to pepper their individuality into every possible fragment of a conversation. You can probably easily think of someone like this, unless you happen to be one of those people, in which case you will probably be tempted to hastily close this article and denounce me as dumb. Try to resist that temptation.
If you find yourself responding to every single person who speaks in class, stop. Ask yourself if your point is really relevant, or if you’re just trying to talk. One does not have to talk frequently to participate in a class discussion. Talking too much dilutes the conversation and any points that you have that may actually be worth listening to. Also, if you are repeating something somebody else said, stop. Do not repeat people, or paraphrase what someone else has already said, unless you are asking for clarification. No one cares if you agree or not, and if your professor or anyone else just so happens to wonder if you agree, you will be asked.
This does not apply to just class. On the contrary, I have found that socially, young people still add in a plethora of useless information and ideas into their conversation. For example, on a plane recently I overheard the conversation between two of the people sitting behind me. One of them was a twenty-two year old girl who was telling (screaming at) the other woman about her life, and her opinions. This is how I knew that she was 22, went to Ball State, and liked Beyonce. Not because I cared to know, or not because the woman that she was talking to even showed slight interest in what she had to say, but rather because she was incessantly talking, and talking extremely loudly. The key here is that the woman she was telling this to showed no interest in what she had to say. Of the responses of hers that I could hear (she was speaking at a normal level) they were all extremely vague and disinterested.
The college girl then went on to talk about how much she hated Donald Trump, and how insane she thought that he is. This part of the conversation was more of a rant, and though I hate Trump as much as the next reasonable human should, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO RANT ABOUT HIM EVERYONE HAS SAID EVERY SINGLE THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY SAID ABOUT HIM. The only thing that hasn’t been said about him is that he may in fact be the Zodiac Killer, but someone did say that about Ted Cruz, so I wouldn’t try to convince anyone of that either.
She also informed the woman next to her about how lazy young people were for not voting, and then went on to say that she did not vote in the Primary Elections. So you’re not only lazy, but also you’re a hypocrite. Way to go.
If what you’re saying is irrelevant to a conversation, don’t say it. If the person you’re talking to expresses no interest in what you are saying, stop talking. If you are talking about something that people should do (vote, bathe regularly, think about your decisions) when you do not do it, stop. Even if you catch yourself in the middle of an annoying, self-obsessed, sentence, stop. An unfinished sentence is better than a useless completed one. Learn when to shut yourself up.
