While it’s true that many skills useful at home are taught in school – such as cooking; there are many people in this modern age that struggle with social awkwardness. Dealing with parents, parties, and communication stress people out so much that they bottle up. They may have been good students, but soon the stress builds up and bam! Parents yelling, parties scaring people, reluctance to leave the home, reluctance to talk about problems, more yelling, and it becomes a vicious cycle. A class about ways to deal with social anxiety or just social awkwardness would be extremely helpful.
The class could go over the FORM acronym used for small talk. After saying hello, socially awkward people often don’t know what to say next. FORM suggests simple small talk topics: Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Motivation. Asking people questions about their family, job, recreational activities, or life motivations is a good way to keep a conversation from having awkward pauses. Teaching this in a class with practice on asking the right questions and forming responses is a good way to assist people in dealing with simple social situations such as parties or meeting new classmates. If people aren’t afraid of starting conversations they can connect better in college and work.
Another possible course topic is romantic situations. It is known that often the most awkward social situation is either responding to a confession or receiving one. When rejecting a confession it’s hard to formulate a response that will adequately consider their feelings. As such, many people cause unnecessary insult or start to panic. Additionally, confessing to someone is also frightening. You don’t want your feelings to be rejected, but at the same time there might be a chance for reciprocation of said feelings. These situations are hard even for people who aren’t socially awkward or have social anxiety, so it would be an excellent choice for learning material.
Methods for handling especially hard situations could also be covered. For example: some people with social awkwardness or social anxiety feel unable to socialize on long or bad days. However, there are some situations where that socialization is unavoidable. As such, the class could cover ways to avoid socialization or methods for explaining social awkwardness and or anxiety to others. An example of such a method is eating or drinking. If you are actively partaking of food or beverages people are less to approach you for conversation. It also provides something to do other than risking being viewed as rude for playing on your phone.
These important things should be covered in a course as they provide manageable ways for people to handle social awkwardness and anxiety. These things could help people come to terms that they are not alone in their fear of social encounters, and help people handle their social lives so they are not stranded in college or work. Social situations are a daily nightmare for some people and this would help.
