At first this lack of questioning made me just a little sad. To me, that one year away is monumental. I learned so much, and, in the process, I became someone different. And it would seem, no one wants to hear about it anymore. I can leave for eight months, return home, and within a week, it has become yesterday's news.
But in a way, I'm also glad that people no longer ask, "How was college?"
Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind when people ask about college. Rather, it's in how the question is asked. When someone asks "How was college?" how am I to respond? What am I to say?
I could tell them about the day I was so tired I went back to my dorm and took a nap between classes and the panic that ensued when I woke up two hours later to find my alarm had not gone off. I could tell them about how odd and funny I found it that it took all of five minutes to walk to church and yet half the ward would be late. I could tell them about the time I texted my friend at 10:45 pm to ask if she wanted to go running with me and then after she said no, I texted her again at 11:15 "don't worry. I found someone." That someone had been a girl from upstairs who in all honesty, I had met once but didn't know. After our run, we split a dinner at midnight at Panda Express and then stayed there talking for another hour. That's one thing I'll miss about the dorms. I could tell them about my new-found obsession with Britain's Got Talent, or how I had to bike three hours round trip to get to a place where I would volunteer in order to fulfill the required number of hours for my class in social work. But they don't really want to hear all this, or if they do, how does one start? So I smile, shrug slightly, and simply say, "It was good."
Last week, I got to eat lunch with a friend and I told her all about college. Of course, there was the element of time. She had the time to hear it all. But that wasn't the only difference. The difference was in how she asked. Had she only asked "How was college?" I would have told her the same thing I've told everyone else. "It was good." Because it seems the only answer.
Instead, though, she asked about specifics. And that was the key. So, just in the future, if you're really interested in getting an answer when your kids come home from school each day, or when your friend comes home from college, or a coworker returns from vacation, ask them what their favorite part was, what the worst part was, the scariest, the funniest, what one thing they'd take away from it, what they regret, what pushed their buttons or stretched them to the limit, what made them cry and what made them laugh, who their friends were, what their favorite class or activity was. Ask them anything! Ask them anything EXCEPT "How was your day?" or "How was college?"
You can start with that if you like (and if you're really not interested in hearing more you can end with that too), but if you want to hear more, you have to recognize that sometimes, in fact, most times, those just don't cover it.
It's why sometimes the fish don't bite, even when they're starving. The bait just wasn't good enough.
Candidly,
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