intracultural communication

This COM requirement class I'm taking, intercultural communication, so far, has not gotten into any specifics about any particular cultures.  We talk about how communication works, the use of symbols, intentional vs unintentional.  Reminds me of a 5th grade "gifted & talented" class.  So far, very familiar almost juvenile material.

The class turns out to be oddly social.  The instructor's lectures feels almost like an hour long chat, and then we split into groups and discuss something, like three paragraph long scenarios involving a few interactions, and how intentional any communication therein would be.  Ok, whatever.  Have to admit, I need the practice.

The class is mostly women.  My chatting partners have been almost all women.  This makes the issue more acute, but broadly speaking, it's making me realize that's I've never talked to people in my entire adult life.  Aside from family and a few other close people - I've never had conversations with strangers, people I barely know, or just met.

Even in the instances where I spent time around people, like back in Minneapolis, I barely talked to any of them about anything ever.  Aside from a few polite exchanges.  I've managed to go most of my life without having conversations with people.  No wonder I never meet anyone, right?

I feel insulated being older.  This class seems to be especially young for some reason.  It doesn't matter as much whether or not they like me.  We're not peers, we're not going to be friends, regardless.  Oddly enough, that makes it so much easier for me to be friendly.  Smiling, making eye contact.  Even stringing together words of appropriate brevity and substance.

For my other class, I have to read a chapter, and then write 5-7 sentences of substance about what I liked most or some such.  This is a weird semester.  Given the lighter course load, I wanted to focus more on training, but then I hurt my knee.  Old injury that flares up sometimes and makes me stop using my leg for a week or two.