Joined: 15 Aug 2009 Age: 74 Gender: Male Posts: 72
21 Aug 2010, 11:41 am
My college is trying to welcome everyone back for the school year.
They will have a major event tonight starting in the evening and going well past midnight.
I know a lot of people that will be at the event. But it seems that even so, I tend to not do well socially at large events like this.
Sometimes I will go with someone to an event like this and not have to worry about feeling out of place, but one of two things will happen.
One, someone will see my friend and start talking to him/her about something that I don't know anything about and the conversation continues for a while and I feel out of place.
If that doesn't happen, we will split up for a while to see other friends. But when I see the other people that I know, they are usually engaged in a conversation that I can't really add to and once again I'm left standing there not knowing what to say.
Even if people put up with it and it doesn't do me any harm, it definitely doesn't do anything positive for me by standing awkwardly in a circle of people and not talking.
Please give me some suggestions that I could use to get around this problem.
Just ask everybody how they're doing and ask them questions, about their summer, and themselves in general. Make a little small talk, but don't talk, more than you feel comfortable, doing so.