Things that upset me
I am sorry, but please stop doing this
Photo courtesy of Liza Summer/Pexels
It’s time for a moment of transparency: I am running out of ideas here. Due to that unfortunate truth, you will not be receiving a highly political article from me this week; instead, I thought it might be time to inform everyone of all the things they’re doing that annoy me. I think this will be beneficial because, after reading this, everyone can immediately get to work in altering their behavior to make me happy. So, here we go, and here is a list of five of my pet peeves:
Constant and completely irrelevant class participation
Before I really start ranting about this one, I want to make one thing clear: I am not one to judge about frequent hand-raising. As a chronic class-participator, I completely understand the urge to share your thoughts about a topic, or simply the impulse to fill a silence that lasts for more than five seconds after a professor asks a question. However, what really irks me is when the constant participation is seemingly completely irrelevant to what we’re actually talking about. I love personal stories, trust me, but maybe not while we are trying to do literary analysis. I can even admit that sometimes it happens naturally and feels normal; great! Let’s wrap it up quickly, though, because there’s nothing worse than watching a professor try to awkwardly redirect the conversation back to the topic at hand when students aren’t catching the hint.
“People-pleasing”
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the urge to make others happy and avoid rocking the boat. However, when someone’s personality revolves entirely around their self-assigned identity as a people-pleaser, it becomes a bit of a problem. My main issue with this is that communication becomes secondary to appeasing others, and when you have a legitimate problem with a situation, no one but you is aware. I think these people often build resentment over time, and this resentment will eventually manifest itself in their relationships—ultimately, making everything decidedly not pleasing for everyone involved. Save yourself and your friends some grief, and grow a bit of a backbone!
Unsolicited advice
This is primarily a problem I run into when I speak to men, but it is not exclusive to them, so everyone should listen up for a bit. If I am telling you about a problem I have or something I am annoyed by, most of the time this is not your invitation to give me a list of things I could do, or to bestow some of your special esoteric knowledge upon me. Maybe this is just me, but if I want or need help, I will probably say that explicitly. Otherwise, it is just irritating to have to sit through advice that is not nearly as groundbreaking as the people giving it think it is.
Making struggles a competition
I genuinely don’t know what it is in human nature that makes us all want to have the most terrible experiences in the room, but this is the absolute worst kind of conversation to have. I know we all know exactly what I’m talking about. When you are in a group of people and suddenly it’s a competition to see who had the worst day or who had the worst childhood or who had the most embarrassing middle school phase, you might be tempted, like I am, to get up and walk out immediately. Unfortunately, I have had to sit through many, many conversations like this. I propose that we all start competing about something more fun and interesting, like who saw the most squirrels on the green; honestly, I just want us to talk about anything other than the most miserable topics you’ve ever heard.
Humble bragging competitions
I know this is just another kind of conversational competition, so it’s possible I just don’t like them in general, but this one will never fail to grind my gears. It’s one thing to be proud of yourself and to share an accomplishment—I will not fault anyone for doing that, and I am happy to celebrate your achievements. However, when it’s done in the format of a humble brag, there is nothing I want to do more than ignore the bait. I encourage everyone to start having more blatant pride in their wins; I would much rather celebrate you outright than need to do a weird form of comforting congratulations, and it’s even worse when the people around you start competing to see who can brag the most while making it sound self-deprecating. Take a deep breath and let yourself celebrate a win without qualifying it!
Thank you for reading this, if you have gotten this far; it felt really therapeutic to get this off of my chest. I hope everyone is willing to make these changes, mostly for my own well-being, but also for the health of our collective campus spirit.