Miserable Lunch

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http://zachspossiblynoteworthyblog.blog ... lunch.html

Have any of you had this kind of situation before? Do you have any advice? Why would anyone care about what month somebody was born in or what candy they like?

It sounds awful, and completely pointless. Why don't you suggest to your adjustment counsellor that it would be more helpful, if you are to socialise in this way, to do so with a small number of people with whom you share a common interest.

Can you find people with similar interests to you online? Maybe some of them go to your school? Who else gets picked on there? Form an army of intellectual supremacists. It's fun.

I can relate so much. I had to go to a "lunch group" last year when I was in 7th grade. In that group, there was me, a counselor, and two 8th graders. Except they acted like 5th graders. They would always be yelling and they wouldn't give anyone else a chance to speak. I mostly was quiet and ate my lunch. I had to do this every Thursday as well. I'm so glad that I don't have to go there anymore!

I've been stuck in that sort of situation before, back in elementary school. Well-meaning teachers would occasionally put me in a lunch group or a recess group with a few of the other kids who didn't have many friends. Or worse, I'd be brought to a group of kids who were told to please include me because I was shy, which was embarrassing.

I almost had something like that happen to me, but there was never time for my counselor to schedule it. But the best path is probably honesty - if what the teacher is doing is really not helping at all, then tell them. Tell them that you don't like it and that a different method is probably going to have to be used.

If they're really well-meaning and trying to help, they aren't going to suddenly give up just because plan A failed.

I went to social skills groups, but skipped out entirely on this malarky. This is more proof that the so-called "normal" people whose social rules we live by truly do not understand the full implications of them. The people with the most friends and the most rewarding social lives tend to answer (or I have found) with the most generic, unapplicable answers (make small talk, talk to new people) that I just don't see people do In The Real World.

In a few years, I think you will be thankful that the best friendships are those that are made spontaneously.

Yep all the time when I was in school. It never worked.

Ugh, yes. Lunch groups that are formed by the counselors are perhaps the worst things ever. I had one in eighth grade. The counselor never ate with us, but she asked a group of girls to let me eat with them. I hated lunch in eighth grade.

If you can though, suggest people to your counselor. When I was in seventh grade I asked if I could have lunch with three people who had been nice to me before and who I wanted to get to know better and they agreed and the other girls agreed and lunch was fantastic because I got to make friends.

So yeah, talk to your counselor and tell them what they're doing isn't working otherwise they won't know any better. Also, if you suggest things to them it'll probably go better. Counselors aren't mind readers after all.

I've been there too. Stuff like that seems to be common with counselors aka throw a shy/NAT person in with a group of random of people and hope things work. I think its a form of laziness on the counselors part since it requires no real planning on their part. Talk to the counselor like others are saying if nothing works than stop wasting your time and try finding groups of similar people online. After multiple failures with counseling programs and the like I found I learned quite a few social skills from talking to people online. Obviously not everything (more like a groundwork or a sketch) but it gave me enough confidence to find a group of real friends.

I had a counselor who would have me do pointless role play conversations like that. That made socializing even more awkward and dreadful.