Is Scilence Itself Akward?

Today we started of class in scilence. It was the first day of a new class and not a ton of people knew each other, and its interseting because when people don't know each other they tend to keep to themselves and not talk to anyone. Yet in our minds we constantly try to find a way to start a conversation with someone we don't know. We try to find similarities between the person and our selves so that we can relate to them, become more open. This is the way we think and tend to act. It is also partially due to students being trained to sit and wait for the teacher to talk beacause that has been the rules for students ever since way back in grade school. However, I do not believe that this is the main reason why people found the scilence to be awkward. I believe that the main cause of the awkward scilence was that it was the first day of our new class and we rely on the teacher to be the first one to talk. Because if they don't talk then we are taught to think that we shouldn't talk at all either. Yet this only explains the scilence portion, the awkward part is created when we fail to find a similarity between other people and ourselves. We fail at this because we assume that we are not allowed to talk at all if the teacher is talking, and how can we ever find similarities between us to relate to one another if we think that we are not allowed to talk? I have two electives, this class and film. On my first day of film I realized that I was one of the last ones to come in. I noticed that some people were talking because they already knew each other. Yet when I took a second look I noticed that almost half of the class had yearning look on their face, almost as if they were going to die if the class didn't start soon. This was because they are dying to talk, they want their voice to be heard, and for some people the only way they can think to talk out loud is if the teacher calls on you or asks a question. This is the way people are taught to think , any slight change in the way they go about doing things seems unrealistic to them. So they just keep to themselves waiting for an opprotunity to approach them when in turn it really should be them who creates their own opprotunity.