Student Successfully Avoids Eye Contact Passing Vague Acquaintance

HAMILTON,NY—Sophomore Alex Vaughn successfully avoided eye contact after noticing a vaguely familiar face walking towards him on campus. Thinking quickly, Vaughn immediately pulled out his phone and began staring at the screen intensely. Not sure a simple stare would be convincing enough, Vaughn pondered how to better portray a human being deeply engaged in an interesting BuzzFeed article. After some internal deliberation, he decided his best bet was to throw in some upward thumb swipes to thwart any suspicion of him purposefully looking at a blank screen. Not one to settle for mediocrity, Vaughn was sure to incorporate a few realistic facial expressions for good measure—to really drive the point home that he was, in fact, reading something on his phone, and not just avoiding the possibility of locking eyes with the girl he kind of knows from Legacies, but would much rather avoid explicitly acknowledging.

Looking up from his phone, Vaughn was happy to see no vague acquaintance in sight, when he ran into his old professor whose class he failed last semester. Not knowing the appropriate course of action, in a split-second decision Vaughn decided on an awkward head nod—a silent but effective method of conveying zero interest in verbal communication until they awkwardly end up in the same line at Price Chopper next month.