Everything in our world today is a competition. It's absolutely everywhere. Since we were kids it has followed us and continued to as we grew up. From the traditional sense of winning at a game, to the less noticeable competition that came later in school. Competition for popularity or the newest gadgets or gizmos.
Why is everything a competition? I see it constantly; a friend shares a story about their hometown and someone right away interjects with their own story of a similar situation. It's small things like that. Small remarks that bring a competition into motion. The problem comes which this overtakes our lives and we stop communicating with everyone and start constantly competing.
When you hear something that you connect with it can grow a friendship. On the other hand, if you hear something and then ignore the rest of the story because you're waiting to interject with your own story, you're no longer building a relationship. You're fighting for the better story. It's important every once in a while to let yourself sit back and listen to someone, really listen openly and completely.
Since coming to school in August, I've learned a lot. I have obviously learned from my classes, but more than that I had to re-learn how to make friends, how to build a relationship with someone from scratch. Something I haven't had to worry about since I was in grade school. It's impossible to not make friends in college. You are constantly surrounded by people, despite if you want to be or not. The harder part comes when you are building your "family" at school. It's vital to find a group of your peers who are your family at school. Moving away from everyone I grew up from was difficult, but I knew that I would find a group that accepted me and it's really amazing how close you can become to a group of people in just a few months.
It's not all fun and games however. You have to work to build these relationships. They might happen automatically, but most of the time you work toward it. You open yourself up and the other person will reciprocate. The worst way to make a long lasting friendship is competing with everything they say.
If you find yourself competing with everyone around you, (something we are all guilty of every now and then) take a minute and step back. Does it really matter if you are right this one time? Do you really need to one-up her when she says she stayed up till 2 a.m. studying? Do you have to share that you got a 92 on your paper when you see that they got a 76? It's easy and seems normal to compete with those around us. It's a part of our culture. But perhaps, instead of competing constantly we could take a minute to build someone up instead.
When your friend tells you they stayed up until 2 studying, tell them that they don't need to stress, they know the material. When someone keeps arguing over a trivial fact, let it go. It's not going to matter in the long run. It's important to know when it's actually important to compete and when it's okay to just be friendly and listen. Who knows? You might just make a friend because of it.
