Will Pavia, New York, Tuesday November 21 2023, 8.20pm GMT, The Times
A year before the pandemic, professors at a university in Colorado were offered guidance on how to conduct small talk with their students.
They might be “masters of delivering lectures on complex topics”, but mingling with students could be intimidating, the university acknowledged. Professors were advised not to ask about a student’s age, weight or political opinions; instead, questions about their home town or weekend plans would be “a great way to make chitchat”.
Now, by all accounts, it is students who need advice on how to make chitchat. All over America, university professors are helping a generation that came of age during the pandemic, studying remotely, to learn the art of small talk.
“There is no doubt that Covid had a significant impact on students’ ability in face-to-face communication,” said David Salisbury, an assistant professor of geography, environment and sustainability at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “I also think the increasing involvement with small screens is impacting social skills.”
In his classroom Salisbury tells students having difficulties “to focus on things like learning something about other members of the group, giving credit to the ideas of others, using people’s names initially [and] using eye contact”.
Lessons on interpersonal communications became compulsory for students at Michigan State University’s business school last year, a response to concerns that students appeared more awkward in social settings.
Marla McGraw, director of career management at the business school, said the lessons were designed to help students applying for placements at companies at a younger age and showing symptoms of the pandemic. While past generations generally applied for summer internships in their final year, now students in their first year were doing it, she said.
“Some of this stuff isn’t as intuitive any more,” she added. “We need to be more specific and prescriptive. They get it once we are more prescriptive.”
A handbook offering students guidance on how to conduct themselves at networking events tells them to begin with: “Hello, my name is [first and last name].” It then says: “STOP! Let them tell you their name,” before they move on to describe themselves. “STOP!” the handbook warns after this. “Give them the opportunity to respond.”
Teachers at the California Institute of Technology said students’ struggles with small talk were “a hole that people knew existed” and no one quite knew how to fix. Claire Ralph, a computer science lecturer, told The Wall Street Journal that, puzzled by why so many students were struggling to find jobs, she had asked to see the covering letters they were sending to companies.
One student had explained to her that they had been told a covering letter ought to be friendly, she said. As she recalled, it began with the words: “Hey wazzup y’all.”
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