Last week I signed up for a career event on the STARR website. The workshop I attended took place in the evening. It was a workshop that helped its attendants on how to hold friendships and have small talk. The key to making and keeping friends is to reach out to others, showing interest, treating others with respect and valuing yourself and others. I learned that these are the key principles you have to follow in order to maintain friendships. The workshop representative started off by giving us a list of conversation starters. The tip was to start a conversation by introducing yourself or giving a comment. To keep the conversation going you will have to ask open ended questions so the person you are talking to can reply back with a detailed response rather than just a yes or no. Asking follow up questions and talking about common interests also keeps a conversation going and makes it last longer. The workshop also talked about body language, they showed up how closed body language such as arms kept to self shows others you would like to be left alone and makes you look unapproachable. Having open arms shows how a person is available for contact. They gave a booklet out with a list of safe questions we can ask someone when we first meet them, a huge tip when you meet someone new is to make sure you speak no evil of others so you don’t scare the person off. This workshop helped me gain knowledge on how to start conversations as well as how to end them, I learned not to just say bye and leave because the person may think something. Instead I can say something like “I hope to see you soon” which will show my interest even when the conversation is over. Overall I enjoyed this workshop because not only was it fun to actually do activities where I used small talk to meet new people, I also learned things which I might have made mistakes on in the future.
