This week, our activity was to go out into public and wear something out of the ordinary and try to interact with people. This task was very difficult for me and I couldn’t follow through with it. However, I did decide to try the task with something I wouldn’t wear normally. Rarely do I ever wear a suit but since we are on campus and I did have a speech to perform, I was able to try this activity. What I had done was sit near the nugget and looked around for anyone who could possible give me the time of day and talked to them. I was able to speak with two people, one a guy and the other a girl. Surprisingly, both guessed my name to be Kevin. I often get this since it is a popular name within the Vietnamese community. This led me to ask them what they thought my major was and one thought communications and other thought business which are both wrong. I am actually a biology major. I had asked why they thought so and one of them told me that being able to come up to them was someone they thought to be in a communications class doing an assignment. The other thought since I was wearing a suit I had a presentation in a business class to do and just thought I had some time to kill.
At the beginning of the talk, I did notice that the two students were stand-offish and I think that is due to the suit I was wearing. I think their first impressions were that I was going to offer them a promo or ask them to sign a petition. After explaining to them that I wasn’t going to do any of that, they seemed to relax and we had a normal conversation.
From this experience, I can see that in a split second a person can make up their mind. They can create a judgment on a person and that it would change their way of interacting with you. I had barely said hi to these people and it looked like their smiles went away and wanted to kick me in the nuts. But after some reassuring, they were able to reassess and interact in a friendly manor.
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