A friend of mine likes to say, “Awkwardness is the bane of modern society.” I’m not completely sure what this means, but with regards to university life, I think my friend has a point.

 

Stanford is an awkward size. With nearly 7,000 undergraduates, plus thousands more employees and graduate students, it’s impossible to know everyone personally. Maintaining the feel of a tight-knit college community is hard when public spaces contain a sea of unknown faces. We are more trusting of others and more open to strangers than we are in the world at large, but not to the extent that we would be if there were only 500 or 1,000 of us.

 

There are a lot of things we do to promote a sense of connectedness. We take the same classes, go to the same parties and wear the same free t-shirts. On a more intimate level, we form subcultures based on our freshman dorms, our fraternities or sororities, the societies and clubs and teams we are a part of. For better or worse, we sometimes divide ourselves by race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and other personal characteristics.

 

Do most people find that being a Stanford student supersedes these other allegiances, at least during their years on campus? I have no idea, but I think the answer would say a lot about the health of our community.

 

There are probably many ways to strengthen our community, but I have thought of one in particular that would be extremely easy to pull off. It would encourage social interaction, and I bet it would have the added bonus of improving academic performance.

 

We need to play more name games in discussion sections.

 

It’s really strange that there doesn’t seem to be any general policy about having people learn each other’s names in sections. Usually the first meeting has a round of introductions, but sometimes even that doesn’t happen. Either way, most of us can’t remember names until we’ve both heard and said them several times. What often happens is that everybody picks up a few names and misses the rest. Eventually, it becomes too late to learn them because it’s embarrassing to sit at a table with people for two months and not know their names.

 

I haven’t done a formal study on this, but when classmates don’t know each other’s names, it seems a lot less likely that they are going to interact much, inside or outside of the classroom. Since sections, especially ones for freshman or introductory classes, provide fairly random cross-sections of the student population, a great opportunity to build diverse friendships is often missed. And once anonymity in the classroom becomes the norm, it becomes hard for even the most outgoing people to buck the trend.

 

In some of my sections, there have been little name cards for the first few weeks. These are much better than nothing (these have generally been my best sections), but they are not perfect. First, it’s hard to see all of them: it’s tricky to place a name card so that everyone can view it from a favorable angle. Second, the cards can provide you with a crutch to rely on in lieu of setting anything to memory. In an ideal section, everyone would get to know each other quickly, and there would be a real opportunity for long-term relationships to develop. At the least, a friendlier atmosphere would make the time pass quicker, and people learn better when they feel invested in the group.

 

Becoming friends starts with learning names, and the solution to that is simple: dedicate the time to drill it in. Play a game or have a competition. Pass a ball around the room at high speed, calling out the names of all the passers and receivers. However they do it, all section leaders should dedicate five or 10 minutes to get a classroom properly acquainted. Beyond making one quarter of class more enjoyable, the results could benefit our community as a whole.

 

Make your name known to Jeff by emailing him at jeff2013 “at” stanford “dot” edu.