An honest nod

Unlike our inboxes, we rarely receive physical mail indiscriminately at this school. Also, only triannually are these documents of mostly cellulous not largely ignored by the student body. These eight page documents are used to facilitate an activity based entirely upon seniority, which is registering for classes. Since this is the last time I will register for classes at this school, I have heard much griping from my fellow engineers. Complaints often center on schedule conflicts, having to wake up earlier than desired, or an asinine non-blocked schedule. Although, an aspect that we take for granted at this school, is that there are only ten possible times a person can take a class. In order to have these ten possible class times, we must have nine times throughout the day when we can travel en mass from one class to another. It is during these travel periods when many greetings are exchanged, but this apparently simple act has many complexities.

First off, at what point are two people supposed to exchange greetings with each other? Think about it, whom did you greet during the last passing period? If you are an upperclassman, do you still greet all of your old floor mates? Do you greet every professor that you have had at least taken one class from? Did you greet everybody that you knew, everybody that is in a class or club with you, or everybody that you consider an acquaintance? Are there individuals that you greeted at one point, but no longer do so? The more I think about my own habits in this activity, the more I realize the type of people I greet isn’t easily quantifiable.

During the said passing period, how many people have greeted you? Was it more than you greeted? Did you return each of their greetings? Have you ever greeted an individual and that greeting wasn’t returned? In what matter were the greetings accomplished? A simple head bob, the slight rise of an eyebrow, a wave of the hand, or was it some kind of verbal communication? If there was some verbal communication, do you think the person who you greeted could understand every word that you said to them? Was there any eye contact between you and the person you were greeting? Though, the real question should be, why do we find it necessary to greet each other?

The purpose of a greeting is a verbal and/or physical recognition of some form of a mutual relationship between two individuals. Naturally these relationships are mostly platonic in nature. These types of relationships are often called friendships or acquaintances (foa). Non-platonic relationships are a different topic all together. I often find myself feeling obligated to greet an individual, but isn’t this just a representation of a forced foa? For if the foa were truly mutual, the parties involved would greet each other without feeling social pressure to do so. Since most of us are “being polite,” we return the greetings. Ergo, we recognize many foa aren’t truly mutual in nature. I hope that I am not alone in thinking it is more impolite to be dishonest to individuals about the status of their foa, than to give them some false impressions by returning a trite greeting.

That being said, this is what I am going to do for the remainder of my time at this school. If I am greeted by an individual with whom I feel I have some form of foa, I will return the greeting. These returns will be of the similar type of greeting giving to me. For instance, if I am greeted with a head nod, I will return the greeting with a head nod. If I feel that I don’t have a foa with that person, I will simply continue walking. This will tell the individual I don’t consider him a friend or acquaintance. If every person in this school would engage in similar activity we could quickly determine the status of every individual’s foa. Then this immensely complicated thing called life would become slightly simpler.