The Educational Value of Eavesdropping
“Eavesdrop on a Conversation,” that is the prompt for this week. Other classes throughout my college career have also given me the same task, which made me think about the educational value in eavesdropping on a stranger’s conversation. Is there something I can learn from knowing a stranger “would go to the gym, but all the laundry is a pain” or overhearing the inner politics behind Greek life on campus? Maybe this is supposed to an exercise in paying attention and focusing on something outside of myself. Is it meant to get you to notice something you would otherwise over look? Almost everybody has eavesdropped on people they know out of curiosity or by accident. When I was in elementary school, I won a prize for selling a certain amount of cookie dough. The prize was a little blue box no bigger than a match book that could amplify sound, so you could hear conversations from further away. I used to army crawl around my house with this blue box in one hand hopin