PHYSICAL PRESENCE
When students are seated alphabetically in a classroom' friendships are significantly more likely to form between those whose last names begin with the same or a nearby letter.This is what is called the propinquity effect.This may not seem important until you consider the fact that you may meet some of your closest colleagues' and perhaps even a future business partner, merely because of an instructor's seating chart! Similarity,people given
a corner seat or an office at the end of a corridor make fewer friends in their organization.If an instructor changes seat assignments once or twice during the semester, each student becomes acquainted with additional colleagues. Consider the entering class of the Maryland State Police Training Academy. Trainees were assigned to their classroom seats and to their dormitory rooms by the alphabetical order of their last names. Sometime later, trainees were asked to name exactly. Larsons were friends with Lees, not with Abromowtzes or Xiernickes,even thouh they were separated by only a few yards.