I want you to think about your childhood friends, your high school friends, your closest friends to this day. Whether it’s 3 people, 5 people or 10 people, do you have them in your head? Fabulous. Now, I want you to think back and remember how those friendships started. Did your mom set up a playdate with the person you call your best friend? Were they on your soccer team? Were they a friend of a friend? Odds are, a lot of your friends were made for you. So let me get this straight...We are shipped off to college and just expected to make friends ALL by ourselves WITHOUT our parents?! How do you even make friends? We were never taught that in school.
It’s not as easy as you think. Take a look at these submissions from current college students to learn a little more about the friend-making process.
“Making friends in college is an ongoing process, it simply never stops. As someone who did not go through sorority recruitment or for people going through recruitment in spring instead of fall, making friends can sometimes take more time than you hoped for. I didn’t have the best first round with making friends in college freshman year. My roommates were so amazing and I was incredibly lucky to have friendships with each of them but I wasn’t making friends outside of them truthfully. After I transferred I did something outside of my comfort zone and was extremely extroverted towards people I was attracted to. The majority of these people were in my classes and I would just sit down next to them and say hi and spark up whatever conversation I could. Let me be 100% honest and say, I’M NOT THAT EXTROVERTED. This was extremely hard for me, but it ended up creating my friends I have now. It benefited me in the long run because it helped me make friendships and also got me out of my comfort zone. I found confidence that my friendliness rewarded me in a social situation I felt discouraged in.
My true advice:
Be patient
Allow yourself to be uncomfortable
Be true to yourself
If you aren’t true to yourself, the friends you make won’t be true to your morals, goals, and won’t be what you want when you truly need support and during college, you’ll be needing A LOT of support.”
There is a lot of good stuff going on here, but I want to emphasize a few points made. For starters, while some people become best friends for life with their roommates, some people don’t. And that’s totally fine, so don’t put pressure on yourself to try and force a friendship or a relationship that just isn’t meant to be. Second, as a fellow transfer student I am proud of you for making the change and for saying hi to strangers at a new school even though it was probably so uncomfy in the moment and you were sweating and nervous and rambling.
The last part in this submission is the most important. You need to be yourself in order to find true friends and people who genuinely make you happy. I am all for learning to go with the flow a little bit, especially when meeting new people, but if you try and go along with what other people are doing and try to be someone you aren’t, you will be stuck with people who aren’t as genuine or kind or funny or honest or whatever is important to you. It’s so cliche but seriously, be yourself and you will find people who are the same.
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“I came into college very nervous. I didn’t know how to make friends. I had lived in the same town my whole life so I honestly don’t remember making the friends that I have since they have been with me since kindergarten. Going into a whole new place with hundreds of new people to meet my age was daunting to put it the least. I had a single and that was something that was nice for alone time, but I did not get that immediate possibility of having a friend that was your roommate. Sometimes early on in college, I found myself in my room alone, kind of sad, because I missed my high school friends and college wasn’t what I thought it would be.
Sometimes making friends is also lucky. One night, I happened to see an old friend I played baseball with on campus and we hung out for a few hours. I met a ton of people on his floor and one of those friends turned out to be one of my best friends and roommate the next year. I started to think about different ways to get involved because I did not want to sit inside my single all year and do homework and play video games. I joined the baseball team and started reaching out to classmates to grab lunch after class or to walk back with a group. It definitely took effort and courage to get out there and try to find friends, but the meaningful relationships that I formed was worth the tough beginning and sadness that I felt for my first month or two at college.
There are still moments where I miss my hometown and miss my high school friends and being with my family but I am glad I went the route I chose. I do not think you need to join sports teams or fraternities or anything to find friends, but I do think sometimes it is a way to meet a lot of friends that may have similar interests as you or just create a lot of opportunities.”
Honestly, there were so many times I wish I had a single my freshman year - you were golden with the alone time. Picture being sad in your room and having your roommate walk in on you crying and having to pretend that you just had a REALLY big yawn! Who was I fooling? I think that having those moments where you are lonely or a little sad push yourself to go outside of your comfort zone and to make change. The next thing you know, you are asking people you’ve never spoken to from class out to lunch or if they want to walk back to the dorm together. Or you’re saying yes to all the plans you get invited to regardless of who invites you and you end up meeting your bestie through one of them. That is my favorite part about this - the way you met your best friend. It was ORGANIC! Just imagine if you hadn’t said yes to hanging out that night? Everything happens for a reason.
Most of the time, college isn’t going to be amazing the second your parents drive away and you’re finally free. In actuality, you are probably thinking to yourself, Oh frick. My mom is gone. What the heck am I supposed to do now? You take a deep breath. You put yourself out there while also taking time for yourself. You allow yourself to miss home and all the good that is there because those are happy memories and it’s okay to feel homesick. And you try and have some fun!
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“Making friends in college is not easy. When I was a freshman I wish that somebody had admitted this to me. Girl drama can be just as bad if not worse than in high school. Friend groups and cliques don’t disappear like people want you to believe. I always had a group in high school and my sole mission when I got to college was to emulate exactly what I had before. I wanted a solid group of girls with a groupchat where we would all say exactly what we were doing at any given moment and anyone was welcome to join. The problem is, that’s not what college is about. Go into college with an independent mindset. I wish I had! You will find the right people when you are focusing on being the best you that you can be. Don’t rush into a “group” of friends because that is what everyone else is doing.”
Ah yes, girl drama. Don’t you just love it? If there is one thing I personally can’t stand, it is petty girl drama and I agree, it can be worse in college than it was in high school…if that is even possible. After my freshman year of college I did some reflecting and realized that I felt like I had just gone through another year of high school. The girl drama, the boy drama, the drama that shouldn’t even be drama. I can’t believe I put up with it all or let myself get upset over silly things. Don’t go into college with any expectations or set plans with what you want your friends to be like, because need I remind you, you don’t even KNOW these people.
My two favorite lines from this submission:
“You will find the right people when you are focusing on being the best you that you can be.”
This is an idea that was mentioned in one of the earlier submissions and it is so true. It is so easy to get caught up in the scene that is first semester freshman year, but just try and step back every now and then and give yourself a little reality check. Is this really what I want to be doing? Is this really someone I want to be hanging out with? What do I actually want to be doing tonight and why am I actually spending it doing this?
“Don’t rush into a “group” of friends because that is what everyone else is doing.”
I understand the comfort that comes with having a set group of friends right away that you can go to the dining hall and eat with and go out to parties with and text and talk about boys with and share clothes with and blah blah blah. Just make sure you aren’t closing off every other possible friend because you feel like you already have what everyone is still looking for. I don’t want you to feel stuck three years down the road.
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“Making friends in college is not as easy as it seems! As a transfer student I found many people at my community college were strictly there for academics and no fun. However, I was still able to find a few awesome people in my classes that I still say in touch with today! My biggest advice would be to just reach out and ask if they want to be friends. It sounds scary at first, but there’s no need to complicate things! Chances are, they’re looking for a friend too!
In one of my group projects I started following one of the girls on social media and we realized we both loved to dance and had that in common! It was so much easier to talk to her after realizing we had something to talk about!”
You are 100% right, chances are they are DEFINITELY also looking for friends and if they haven’t said hi first, it’s because they are overthinking it and are nervous too. Go in and make the first move. Also, when it comes to social media I feel like people tend to wayyyy overthink when it is appropriate to follow someone because they don’t want to come off as stalkerish. ODDS are, they also looked you up on social media and are too scared to hit the follow button. It doesn’t matter if it is the first day of school and you follow that person after class after having said NOTHING to them - just do it!!!