Wednesday, August 17, 2011

What the Fuck Wednesday. Life Coaching edition

Today, What the fuck Wednesday is brought to by a very very awkward young lady that I happen to work with at my second job.

I think it is flattering whenever someone is infatuated with me. I can even understand how it can come about. I'm smart, decently attractive, and have my life together. Why am I single again? Oh yea because I do shit like what I pulled on Saturday.

This is the girl I tried to write about on Friday when blogger decided it wanted to be a dick and handicap my post. So instead I'm going to talk about it for this what the fuck Wednesday post.

I remember being in high school. It wasn't even that long ago. I remember taking a certain course called Career and Personal Planning. or CAPP. It was the course where they are supposed to teach us how to succeed in life personally and professionally. Who would have guessed? Well the problem was, the teacher they got to teach it. Did they find someone that had success in life? Someone that was happy where they ended up?

 No. They didn't.

Instead they got the social reject of the school to teach the course. Do you want to know what I learned in that class. I learned to play the card game "asshole" and how to play the "band game".

The band game is a first letter last letter game. I say Seether the next person says Rancid the next person says Drop Kick Murphys so on and so forth.

The worst part is that the teacher would play with us. The sad thing is, this had been going on for years. I'm worried.

Why am I worried? Is it because the youth of today won't know how to balance a check book? Who the fuck uses a check book. Is it because the youth today don't know how to do CPR. Auto-Defibrillators work better anyway. (these were things in the curriculum)

No. I'm fucking worried because the vast majority of youth today don't have any clue how to interact with people. Sure they can type up a blog, chat on facebook, or they can go and be little racist, misogynists on 4chan. I can guarantee though that the vast majority of these kids people do not actually have any idea how to get up in front of a group of strangers and tell them about anything for 5 minutes.

Why do I feel so confident in this guarantee?

When I was in college I had to take a course that was basically the same thing as CAPP. At that point however it was almost too late. Not for me. I'm awesome. No, it was too late for my classmates.

When it came time for the impromptu presentations, (which we were allowed to prepare in advance, we just wouldn't know when we would be giving them) the silent pauses between sentences, the "um" "hmm" "uhh"s were all too prevalent. Those were the majority of students. I'm not including the one that threw up before he even made it to the front of the class. I'm not going to bother with the kid that shook so bad that he couldn't read the paper he was holding. I kinda don't even want to mention the thirty two year old that started crying.

Yes I understand that public speaking is hard. This wasn't even strangers though, these were classmates and we weren't talking about anything hard. One classmate did his presentation on how to tie a tie.

Public speaking still too much of an issue? Fine I'll take it down a notch. Interviews. I've never really had to do an interview till recently. Now that I have, I understand why I'm told I interview well. Some of these people, some older than I am, shake uncontrollably the entire time. Their voice sounds like they are going to cry. It's a job people, relax, show some confidence.

I've kinda been going on a tangent here but I promise that it ties back to the awkward chick.

Instead of me getting credit for playing card games and upgrading my vocabulary of band names in high school I would have liked to see some interview preparation. Public speaking coaching.

Not only that but relationship coaching.

I may be a little harsh on this girl because she may be intimidated by me, but I'm still only human. She follows me around like a puppy and smiles at me like a heroin addict that just shot up. It creeps me out but I can't say anything because so far there hasn't been any blatant advance, so it's just awkward.

Why doesn't she say something to me instead of making it awkward? It isn't just awkward for me. The rest of the staff have also noticed.

I don't exactly know how to go about educating young people on the ups and downs of human relationships but anything would be better than what we have.

So many young people are socialized by playing "World of Warcraft". They are taught that sitting behind a computer screen is just as social as talking to someone's face.

We are raising a generation of anti-social neck bearded basement dwellers. The amount of 30 yr olds that live at home with mommy and daddy makes me sick.

I follow a lot of blogs that are about dating. The reason why they are able to blog about it in the fist place is because it takes a long time to find a decent match. You'd think with things like eharmony and match.com trying to match people by personality and such that it would actually be easier. It should be.

The problem is the mass majority of people don't have the normal social skills that used to be instilled in everyone before the internet became so prevalent.

What the fuck is up with peoples complete and utter lack of social skills? Can we make it a mandatory part of the education system? Is there an easy solution?

12 comments:

  1. All very good questions and totally valid. If only I had some answers for any of them...

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  2. I might be a 30 year old moving back with my mumma until my malfunctioning brain recalibrates. :(

    But seriously I don't know what the fuck will happen to the next generation given that I was ridiculously shy as a kid and I didn't even have a computer in which to hide behind.

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  3. As a parent, I have to point out that it is difficult to encourage your children to interact with stranger (to climatize them socially) when we a supposed to teach our children not to talk to strangers.

    Life coaching should definitely be taught in school.

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  4. @Randy: I've come up with some answers.

    @Kat: You are moving "back" to your parents place after a career issue totally different than the 30 yr old engineer I know that owns a house but chooses to live at her parents place.

    @henrietta: No you don't. You have a picture of your tits on your blog, that isn't anti-social, it's a public service.

    @kelly: As a parent you should encourage your children to interact with strangers, supervised of course. By the time I was 5 if I wanted pizza for dinner I had to order it.

    This is the thing. Parents aren't allowing their kids to socialize the same way as before due to this massive amount of negative media that is out there. Statistically speaking there is not a higher percentage of child predators out there as there was 50 yrs ago. You just hear about it more now. People have been fucked up for a long time, probably since the dawn of time. The only difference is now we are scared shitless of it instead of teaching our youth how to deal with it.

    PS. Parents when at a restaurant, make your 12 yr old kid order their own food. Talking to the waiter isn't going to scar the kid.

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  5. I try to avoid people much younger than I am, so this is not something I've witnessed too much. But I agree with you on social situations. I mean, I hate them with a fiery passion of a thousand suns, but I'm not awkward in them - they're just exhausting.

    How would you feel about a "social skills" test at at 24, and anyone who doesn't pass get's put into a concentration camp removed from normal society where they are taught social skills?

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  6. I'm very social. And by social I don't mean slutty.

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  7. I'm very social and by that I do mean slutty.

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  8. I'm very social and by that I do mean slutty.

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  9. Before I go into my anecdote (which I'm sure you don't care about), let me just say I love how you got into this tangent, because do you have proof that your stalker is socially awkward because of the internet? Before WoW there was Dungeons and Dragons,books, studying, what have you... Before facbeook there was... ok well you have a point there.

    I think there's a difference though in being antisocial and just socially awkward. Antisocial people CAN be socially acceptable. The thing is, they just appear to be that way. Socially awkward people tend to be well meaning, but like in most cases, they don't know any better. I don't think it's a problem of being able to handle people. I'd rather narrow it down to growing some cojones. I recall a post you wrote which convinced me to subscribe to you. I forgot what it was called, but it essentially ranted about how this generation is metaphorically castrated due to their inability to stand up for themselves.

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  10. @Max: Yes a concentration camp would work.

    @Heather: I'm glad your social.

    @Mr. Big: The world will always need sluts.

    @Leila: I've said it before, there will always be a mixture of people out in the world. D&D was a culprit before you're right. However, The internet is compounding the problem skewing the "amount" of socially awkward and anti-social people out there. As for why this girl is awkward I don't know I just used it as a way to get the the point. Oh and the post your were wondering about is called The castration of a younger generation.

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  11. I still don't think the internet compounded anything. I just got out of high school. So based on that experience I can pretty much say that thanks to the internet, going out, arranging places to be, and finding places to be got a lot easier. The people who barely go out (ie me and a bunch of other nerds) never go out for the same classic reasons: we just don't like socializing. What people are lacking nowadays are scruples, etiquette, and a little respect for themselves and other people. I'll agree that the internet and other fast-type technology kind of handicaps people in terms of patience, endurance, and discipline.

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My frail ego requires validation.