I’m coming from a culture where is very important to say the greetings. You woke up in the morning you say “Hi” to your parents, your family. The French culture values greetings and it’s very impolite if you do not greet people all over the place where you going. Here in the United States people don’t even take the time to say “hello,” “good morning,” “how you doing?” they actually don’t have time for that. Actually, saying “good morning” and “hello” makes people feel personally welcome or acknowledged. We all need recognition, we need to feel like we matter to other people. And we can give this some of this significance simply by greeting them. The first thing that we don’t even realize is when we greet someone with a good morning; we are actually giving them a blessing. We are telling them that we hope that they will have a good morning.
Actually I observed, a lot of time that you can be in a same class that someone and outside the class, when you say “Hi!” to this person, they look at you like you are weird and then of course a lot of time don’t answer to your greetings. How long would really take to say a simple hi or a simple thanks. For example one of your classmate give you a piece of paper, how long it will take you to say thanks, not even ten seconds, actually it is not an obligation for this person to pass you the piece of paper, being polite by saying thanks is a really good behavior.
I’m pretty sure that everybody has his own business and it can sometimes be difficult to greet people that you don’t know, but think about the fact that you can make friends, and sometimes make some people’s day. In fact, certain people have really bad esteem about themselves and a greeting can be recognition of the person presence, they can feel like someone can like them, treat them and appreciate them for who they are.
In everyday life, people who greet seems friendlier, well- liked, rather than people who don’t even take the time to be polite. You can start new friendships and build upon existing ones simply by taking the time to say hello. You may be surprised by how effective it is.
Think about those days where you feel very unwelcomed, where you feel like nothing is ok. A simple: hi! Are you ok? Can help you to evacuate your stress because, we are sometimes more able to explain our life to strangers than people that we know. Think also about the fact that you will look more educated than the others and people will look at you like a really distinguished person.
Don’t be afraid to say hi even if you don’t get any answer back, of course you maybe feel frustrated but always tell to yourself that saying “hi” is never going to kill you. We are all human beings and I think college is a very good place, where we should act like humans with good behaviors and learn from others by being open minded. So stop looking at people with big eyes when they say hi to you it can be part of their culture or they just are really an educated person.