Silence can be golden

Emma GardnerContributorEmma Gardner is a junior who is involved in Academic Decathlon, Mock Trial, tennis, choir and Site Governance. She is a frequent contributor to The Samohi.One of the rarest things observed in conversation is a pure, unadulterated pause. We live in a fast-paced, mercurial society where silence is not merely scarce, but alien. Nature abhors a vacuum – silence. Those who can learn to master a well-placed pause will find a conversational weapon in this.I discovered this tactic by accident, the result of my own awkwardness. I took a class at Princeton last summer. Upon completing the class, my peers and I were told we would receive our grades by mail within one week. After three agonizing weeks, I still had not received my grade, and resorted to calling the main office. Once I was on the phone with the right person, I asked about my grade.“Nothing I can do,” came the response. “Our policy is clear. Everyone waits for their grades to come in the mail.” I was stunned into momentary speechlessness, not used to being so flatly refused.The aggravated voice, which I soon recognized as the director of my program, grumbled, “Well, we normally don’t like to do that over the phone...” I was about to respond with a monologue of my reasonable expectations and, subsequently, the program’s unfulfilled promises, when I chose to delve way outside my comfort zone, and wait.I said nothing. I knew he was an awkward guy, and figured that if I put the burden on him to respond, I might be able to get more out of him than with the contentious criticism I always seemed to fall back on. After another few seconds of awkward phone silence, his opposition crumbled: “I — I guess I can look up your grade manually... What did you say your name was?”The lesson here is more than just that with a strategic pause, you can get your grades out of a recalcitrant registrar’s office: it is that silence can have a manipulative effect. With those who are conditioned to fear silence  or who may be ill-equipped to deal with an awkward pause in a conversation — this is an excellent device to employ.Our Western mentality of instant gratification indulges this need for perpetual noise. We subconsciously feel the need to fill the silence with sound. Charles de Gaulle, who led France during and after World War II, wrote, “Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”The only time society condones silence is when one is read his or her Miranda rights. Don’t wait until a police officer advises you to remain silent to protect yourself — selectively use silence now to win arguments, to get other people to “incriminate” or reveal themselves, and to force a manipulative awkwardness.We students should add the strategic pause to our debate tool belts.eic@thesamohi.com