Chris Blake, 24

I am not quite sure this post will do Chris justice. But I'll try my best.

Setting the scene: My two friends and I were in Pinkberry enjoying some amazing frozen yogurt when I turned around and noticed someone sitting alone and voraciously attacking his frozen yogurt. (Lightbulb moment) He should be my new friend for the day! And so I asked him to come sit with us and have a conversation.

Things I noticed:
1. He is VERY animated. In his speech and hand motions, it's like a whirlwind of emotions and quite an adventure to talk to him.
2. He is passionate about his beliefs (mainly that Toronto is much more fun than Boston)
3. His catch phrases are: "Well the thing is" and "Here's my question"

He was so funny. We were all laughing for that entire conversation. I didn't really get to ask him that many questions but I learned a lot about him nonetheless. He spent a summer in China where he taught children curse words. Apparently children there are fascinated with American curse words. A little boy once ran up to him and yelled, "Fuck you!" and then smiled and asked Chris if he had said it correctly.  Oh, before this conversation started, he apologized profusely for saying "shit." Then Chris realized his profanity didn't faze us, his speech transformed into that of a sailor's.

(Probs my only opportunity to add a picture of a Chinese baby.)

Chris went to college in Toronto and enjoyed himself thoroughly, or at least that's the way he made it seem since he raved about the restaurants open late and crazy party life that he enjoyed. He's now a graduate student at MIT studying quantum communications... I think.

Google pictures: Toronto. If this is what it looks like, I definitely want to go!

He was very excited about the differences in abbreviations!

COM at BU - communications (aka journalism, PR, advertising)
COM at MIT - computer communications "The further you get in computer communications, the less you can communicate with other people" - Chris Blake

ECE at BU - Early Childhood Education
ECE at MIT - Electrical Engineering

^This took up about 20 minutes of conversation time. Every minute of it was interesting. That's how fun he was!

Let me just point out before I wrap up; he is fully aware that he's a very energetic kid with a knack for interesting conversation. At one point, Emily said something along the lines of, "You are so fun to talk to!" and he responded with "Yeah!! I know I'm awesome." It only made him that much cooler.

Thanks for a great evening. I think I can safely speak on behalf of Mariah and Emily as well when I say that you entertained us thoroughly. If you are ever in the neighborhood, we will take you to Noodle Street. Have a good year, new friend!

Tess Nellis, 18

On such a sucky day, I met quite the little ray of sunshine! Tess Nellis was waiting for an appt. with the same professor that I was, but for an advising session. She was so nice and friendly. People around here don't usually have the bubbly personality that I used to see a lot more back home. Not to say that there aren't a great range of wonderful personality types here, it was a breath of fresh air to meet someone so vivacious.

Is it just me or do I meet a lot of freshman? I was thinking about it and I decided it was because freshman are in the "I'm still getting to know people" phase and are more likely to strike up a conversation than others. And they look have an approachable vibe to them. Well anyways, Tess is a freshman in CAS and a history major. She may minor in COM, which is obviously the best school at BU so hopefully she does! We talked at length about classes although we also bonded over living in Warren Towers.

Tess - If you are ever around Hojo, come find me! It was great meeting you and hopefully you got what you wanted out of your advising appointment. Thank youu!

Melissa Godfrey, 33

I met Melissa at the gym today when I took an interval training class where we had to do many different jump roping exercises. She was jumping like a pro. Well technically, I just saw her there. I met her afterward in the sauna. (A great place to escape to when it's disgusting and overcast outside!) In my past sauna experience people usually just keep to themselves but Melissa took it upon herself to start up a conversation with me. She even complimented my elementary jump rope skills - it was my first class.

The conversation that I had with Melissa was amazing. What I took most from our conversation was that it's okay to be unsure about the future. I know so many people running around like headless chickens trying to plan their lives out their lives after graduation in detail. It's a good idea but if you don't know what you want to do, why push yourself to get a job you don't want? Melissa is still exploring options. After graduating from Newbury College, she started working at a hotel because she wanted to get into hotel management but later decided it was not a good fit. She then started working part-time in sales and she enjoys that more.

She has so much courage and strength to keep looking for that perfect job until she finds it. A good majority of people who leave college without a clear idea of their future, and even those people who know what they want to do just settle for the first thing they can find or a job that's not quite right.

Best part of this whole situation: I'm going to see Melissa again/on the regular. As long as I keep up with jump roping classes and she does too..

Guest Posts!

Happy Tuesday! I would like to extend an invitation to those who have been featured in One Less Stranger to contemplate adding a guest post to my blog about what it was like being approached. Let me know if that's something you would be willing to do and I'll either submit them whenever you write them or wait until the end. I would love to see what you thought about the whole experience and maybe YOUR suggestions of what I can improve.

Also just FYI:

Cherophobia - Obsessive fear of laughing to death; irrational fear of gaiety

Jake, ??

Going to lectures is probably the easiest way to meet a new friend. That's Jake. Ever seen CSI? Well, Jake will soon be a real life version of those characters! Right now he's studying forensics at BU but only part time. He also works in research at MIT. Since he graduated from Harvard, he's made quite the rounds of Boston schools. Wonder where this kid's loyalty lies...

Oh yeah- with New York. Well at least in terms of sports, he's definitely a fan of all the NY teams although he keeps that a secret in the home of the Red Sox. His other passions include 7th grade punk bands (i.e. Blink 182, Sum 41, etc.) and physics. He admitted to knowing very few Taylor Swift songs - apparently that's what he gets teased for among his friends. I'd probably shun you a little for that, Jake.

Coolest fact about Jake: He was excited for my post! I'm going to either label his personality as fun-loving or optimistic. Maybe both. When we initially did our "I'm sitting next to you so I'll extend some polite gestures" nods, he asked how I was doing and willingly continued the conversation. Also, I don't know a lot of graduate students who are willing to go to random Q & A events held on campus. Although, our Q & A was with Elie Wiesel and I don't know who WOULDN'T go to that! 

Jake - It was great meeting you. Hopefully you found my blog okay, I tried to emphasize the importance of the word project in the URL. Also I forgot to ask you how old you were. You were great lecture company and if I see an intense crime scene I'll definitely check to see if you are around.

More Musings..

Sitting on a bench today, trying to read a book before class I started to think about the blog. Only because, when I went to Radio Shack today, I had a conversation with the guy that worked there while he was ringing up my stuff and then stayed a little longer to finish talking before I left.

(His name was NuNu!)

The conversation that I had with him lasted no more than five minutes. It was very basic, yet if I had waited and drawn out the conversation a little more, I would have gathered enough information to bust out a post on him. My point? I am not really getting to know these people. Obviously, it would take a longgg time to actually get to know someone. I mean I live with two of my best friends from last year and I still don't feel like I really know them. When I mentioned my desire for superpowers in the first post that I wrote- superpowers to learn about every person - I meant learn about them fully. About their pasts, their goals and their favorite colors.

So I want to get to know these people better, but I don't have a lot of time to meet them. (Can't exactly sit down for an hour-long conversation.) Where is the middle ground?!?!

Some of my solutions are:
-asking better questions
-allocating more time to learn about them

And..that's it. Any suggestions? I mean as of right now I am pretty sure Mallory is the only one checks my blog on the regular but if you happen upon this post, I would really appreciate your thoughts on the matter.


**Also - I plan to venture away from BU people soon enough. Hopefully I'll explore different areas of Boston. And of course I plan on continuing this over Thanksgiving break so I'll find some SoCal people too!

Vanessa Rivera, 19

The BU Bus was almost about to pull away from the Marsh Plaza when the doors opened once more for Vanessa. I had to meet this go-getter. After congratulating her on her BU Bus accomplishment, we exchanged war stories of waving down the bus.

Her best one: Just after the bus pulled away from a stop, a frantic student started waving it down so it pulled back in to let her on. 

^That's awesome.

(BU Bus)

Side note: The most awkward part of this whole meeting process is introducing the fact that I write a blog about people. Natural conversations can happen often if you keep your eyes open for opportunities but then comes the part where I have to say "So I write this blog..." Anyways, today the awkwardness was relieved slightly when my friends pointed this out and we could all laugh about it together.

Vanessa doesn't know this yet, or maybe she does because I told her, but she's going to be a journalist!! She's in CGS right now, which she enjoys because it gave her time to explore career options, but she will soon declare a double major in history and psychology. Sooo many history majors turn into journalists and soo many journalists minor in psychology. It's going to happen, Vanessa. You'll be in COM soon enough. :]

(West campus)

Finally, we ran out of time because she reached her home, 1019, so she imparted some final wisdom for BU students or people curious about the dynamics of our school. She lived in West Campus last year as well and she swears by the tight-nit community that exists on this far side of BU. Although it's a long walk from classes and...well in my opinion basically everything else besides the gym, she says people in West live in their own private world. She couldn't imagine living anywhere else.