College Students: Take Time To Say Hello

"Hello, how are you doing?"

When you are in line waiting to get your food from the cafeteria, getting your coffee from the shop, or getting your books from the bookstore, how often do you take the time to ask the people working in these places that question? These people are taking time out of their day to serve you the food or provide you help with finding the right study materials but how often do you take the time to ask how they are doing?

By taking a few moments to say hello to others, it will help you stand out from the crowd. Not many people take time to say hello to people in different departments on campus so taking just a few minutes to ask how someone's day is going will help set you apart.

College campuses vary in size but there are different ways in which you can get to know more then the professors and your classmates. For example, when you go into the cafeteria to get your lunch or dinner, take a couple of minutes to see if you can strike a conversation with the person serving the food. You can ask him or her how the day is going, if a lot of people have come through or find ask a simple question to get a small conversation going. It will probably mean a lot to this person that you are taking time out of your day to get to know him or her and it will set you apart from others in a positive way.

Doing this can take a little bit of practice, however, getting to know others will not be as hard. You might be amazed how easy it is to strike up a conversation with someone with a little ice breaker and how much that person might appreciate you taking the time to do so.

During my time at Otterbein, I took time to practice this skill early on and it benefited me along the way. It meant a lot when I took time to say hello to the people working in the bookstore, the people up in the cafeteria (aka the Cardinal's Nest), the coffee shop on campus, the people working in the library, the admissions staff, the alumni relations staff and several others. Taking a few minutes to say hello to these people each day made it easier for me to have a conversation with them later on and helped me develop relationships with several different people on campus. By being friendly to these people and taking time to learn how their days were going, it made it easier for me to say hello to these people on a daily basis and become friends with them.

Whenever you are running errands on campus, don't forget that taking a few minutes to say hello to someone can help develop a relationship and make you a friendlier face on campus.