Since I’m so unpopular at this Majors Fair, I’ll use the favorite tool of all unpopular kids: a cell phone that you can use to text, emai and blog to pretend that you are not talking to anybody not because you are lonely but simply because you are too busy for silly things like talking to people.
The nice colleague at the table next to mine is now driving my unpopularity home by picking up his sign up sheet, pointedly counting the multitude of names on it, and looking with compassion at my nearly empty sheet with its poor 4 names on it. I probably would have done the same in his situation, so I can’t really complain. And collegiality be damned. Popularity is so much more important.
Well, as I say whenever one of my articles gets rejected, “At least, I’m pretty.”
This activity is going to turn all of us into our former, high school selves.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have to go to four of those a year, but they are for high school students visiting the university with their parents, trying to decide where to go. Usually, our table gets approach by those wanting to know Study Abroad options (that’s a completely different table). If you see the numbers, at my university probably one student a year enrolls as a freshman declaring Spanish/French/German as major, but Spanish in itself graduates around 25 majors a year. So don’t despair, they usually declare later in their school life.
LikeLike
We have this kind of event, too. It’s called the Preview. Those events are total fun because you see parents who ask for the information and gather brochures while their kids roll their eyes and stand around looking bored. 🙂
Thanks for trying to make me feel better! 🙂
LikeLike
“you see parents who ask for the information and gather brochures while their kids roll their eyes and stand around looking bored”
Same here. Particularly amusing is when the parents start explaining what a precocious genius “Johnny” or “Mary” are, and the kids want to disappear.
LikeLike
Yes, and then the parents start shooshing the kids and telling them, “Listen to what is being discussed! Pay attention! Put down your cell phone!” 🙂 🙂
Priceless.
LikeLike
please shoot me now as they have just announced the latest round of these at TTLAC. Could anything be any more 20th C than all of us sitting at FREAKIN’ tables talking F2F?
LikeLike
You are SUCH a historian! 🙂 Always putting everything in a historic perspective.
LikeLike
I rather do F2F than, I don’t know, Skype interviews or something like that. They are still a waste of time, although I think I learn the requirements for the Spanish major and for my school core curriculum thanks to attending these events.
LikeLike
haha well yes Clarissa, and Spanish Prof, I don’t want to skype but I’d rather interact at home via FB or email than sit at a table like a big dork peddling my wares of history 🙂
LikeLike
OK, I managed to decipher F2F after a lot of thinking. But what is FB?
Also, why am I so clueless today?
LikeLike
FB: Facebook
LikeLike
Facebook is so off my radar that I didn’t even think about it. 🙂
LikeLike
I don’t mind the events as such. It’s the feeling of being that kid who has to sit alone at lunch all over again that bothers me. 🙂
LikeLike
I must have been a weird teen. I enjoyed being alone or with very selected friends. This has not changed.
Spanish prof is right. Students often decide to major/double major in Spanish or another foreign language during their first or second year of study.
LikeLike
I enjoyed being alone, too. But I didn’t enjoy other people knowing about it. 🙂
LikeLike