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How to get by, one lie at a time
The Advocate
When I first started at Mt. Hood Community College, I was told that you just have to look like you know what you’re doing to get people to think you’re doing a good job. At the time I thought it was hoax, and that preparation would overshadow the faux talent of others.
I was wrong.
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Preparation is a good thing and you should definitely prepare, but with a college student’s schedule it is not always possible to prepare to the fullest.
During winter term I had an epiphany and started acting like I was important and like I knew what I was doing all the time. Faculty, staff and students started greeting me in hallways as if we had been friends for years — and some of them I have never even had a conversation with.
The acting is paying off and people that I barely know tell me what is on their mind and the struggles of their daily lives without even being asked. People have opened up to me about things that I never wanted to know.
One time someone came up to me and told me all about her ex-husband and why she left him, and I had never met this lady. When I told her that that seemed personal and that I’d rather not get in the middle, she said she just needed a friend and I seemed like a friendly face to talk to, which was good enough for her at the time.
This makes the illusion a tricky thing.
It’s nice when people greet you or ask how your day is going, but when people started telling you details about what’s going on inside the privacy of their own home, in particular the bedroom, it becomes creepy and the best way to distract these people is to do what everyone hates: I one-up them. If someone tells me they met Brandon Roy, I tell them I have Michael Jordan’s cell phone number. If I’m told that you someone lost five pounds, I lost 10. It might not be true, but at least I know that I will be left alone, because no one likes to be overshadowed.
During New Student Orientation, I was looking so important that several of the new students came up to me and asked me questions that I had no answers to. One of the parents even came up to me and asked me to set her up on a date with one of the advisers, which is completely beyond my control and probably frowned upon by the college.
My advice to you all is to walk straight up, put your shoulders back and pretend that you are important.
Some people call this charisma, others refer to it as cockiness, but regardless of what it is called it will be helpful when you feel like you’re just one in a million.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.