Yachats Oregon Writer Rick Schultze

Well it’s that time of year again when some people are called upon to put their best social skills to work. A social skill is defined as “any skill facilitating interaction and communication with others. Social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning such skills is called socialization. Social skills can be measured on about how you treat other people and how do you react to them. It’s a matter of dealing with the people around you.”

The people I’m referring to at the beginning of this column are those who are going back, or are back at school. From Kindergarten through College and Graduate School, the beginning of the school year requires interaction and communication with others. There’s nothing like the first day of school when you are a kid wondering what the other kids think of you! You need to use what social skills have since first impressions are often how you will be judged for quite awhile. However, using your best social skills can be challenging especially if your ability to relate and interact with others hasn’t been developed or you are necessarily a social person. The best rule of thumb is to pay attention to what others are doing, talking about, or participating in and try to see how your set of social skills will enable you to interact with the others.

Of course there are other people that use their social skills a lot on a very visible daily basis. I’m referring to famous people and a particularity good example of a master of the social skills is the late Edward Kennedy. Over the course of his long political career and years in the glare of the spotlight Kennedy seemed to always to be at ease with most people. In the political arena he was known for his ability to coax compromises out of opposing political parties and his work has had a tremendous impact on many aspects of health care and other important issues in this country. On the other side of the coin was Kennedy’s reputation of being a hard living man with a number of questionable incidents. But despite this and his life in the spotlight, Kennedy displayed text book socialization never failing to be willing to listen, interact, suggest and act upon suggestions. Per haps his social skills more than anything sealed his place in American history as one of the countries most famous statesmen.

I doubt that many of us will be called upon to display the social skills necessary to be someone that is in the spotlight on a daily basis but you never know so using common sense and being aware of others is a good idea.

Enjoy your gift of socialization!

To reach Rick Schultze email yarick@pioneer.net