When having a break from my classes, I decided to go to Trabant and observe everything around. Trabant is a popular area and has many different purposes to it. Some people, like me, come here to do work and get away from their dorms (like an outlet). Others come here as a walkway to get to places or even to grab a quick meal in between classes. The day I decided to sit in Trabant was a huge tour day. The families touring Delaware were actually very into it. You would expect them to be on their phones taking pictures of the campus to have memories but that was not the case. I saw children speaking face-to-face, with eye contact, to not only their parents but asking the tour guides questions. This really shocked me that these people didn’t walk around campus with their heads fixed on the phones. After the tours passed, I began to observe the people then sitting around me. Some of them were sitting alone while others sat with friends. Even sitting with friends people would talk to each other but at the same time have their heads stuck in their phones. I was amazed at how people still found a way to have a conversation but also have their minds on social media. Some people weren’t even speaking to each other and just sat.

I then went on with my day and at night decided maybe to see how my friend’s interpersonal skills are with each other. At dinner, I was bold enough to leave my phone in my bag the whole night to observe my friends and their skills in communicating. When we would walk into the dining hall, all of them were glued to their phones but once we sat down it was kind of like wind came and took the phones out of the picture. Everyone put their phones to the side and we sat and had a nice face-to-face conversation. Honestly, I was pretty impressed that my friends were able to put their phones down for about an hour and have a nice full interaction conversation. 

Communication in person is a perfect way to build a great friendship with people.  Communicating in person not only lets you express emotion, unlike texting a person, but you also get to see if you can get a feel for the person. Meaning if you can have a good conversation with someone face-to-face that can set the foundation of a friendship. Friends and your peer’s relationships are truly based off of being able to hold a good conversation in person. Hiding behind a screen is not a way to call a friendship a true friendship. I am lucky enough to have friends that I can talk to in person and also on the phone, through many different apps.

Doing this assignment, starting off in Trabant, was very interesting to me because I did get to see how people at the University of Delaware interact and I liked carrying it over to my friends to evaluate off of them their interpersonal communication skills.