by Scott Lariviere, Staff Writer
Making friends in college. Easy right? Not necessarily.
Think back to your first day coming to the university. If you’re lucky, friends you met in high school attend the same school as you, so you may not have needed to make friends from the start.
If you moved in as a residential student as a first-year you probably were nervous and cautious about your new roommate. Who are they? What are they really like? Friendly or a nuisance?
For me, making friends in the university wasn’t imperative to having a social life because I’m a commuter. With that, I am also a transfer student from a community college.
The wonderful thing about being a MASS Transfer student is that I came to the university with friends and classmates.
But of course a new school means new people, and a chance to build new friendships as well.
As a transfer student who is also a commuter, that isn’t something that happens naturally.
When I first came to the university, I was a new face that people haven’t met yet. I didn’t live on campus, so I was an isolated stranger.
There is a certain kind of challenge for a transfer-commuter student to make friends. Folks in your major have already made friends and connections before you arrived.
That challenge is conquerable if you put in some effort.
My way of making friends in college was simply striking up a conversation with a classmate.
You can make an observation about something like the weather, but that’s cliché.
Instead, you can bring up something in pop culture or in the news that can be discussed with someone you haven’t met before.
For me, I typically start by asking about the professor if I haven’t had them before. If the other person says they haven’t had them, you can easily flow into a discussion about the “Rate My Professor” rating of the professor.
And then, right after discussing that professor, it is only right to start gossiping about your other professors.
Now, there is another way to make friends. And before I continue, yes, it sounds creepy when you think about it. But one way of making friends is to sort of eavesdropping on a light conversation (never do so if it’s a serious conversation – use your best judgement).
That way, you can chime in and join the discussion. You’d think it wouldn’t work, but it did for me.
Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee it will work for you, so proceed with caution. And again, do this option carefully. It’s very rude to just interject into a conversation, especially if it’s an A-B conversation.
How you make friends varies. Sometimes, it can be an amusing event. I made a few friends in an unusual way.
For example, here is a story of a friendship made: While taking a class together (mind you a class that we were falling behind in) and in a state of panic to help each other reach the deadline for an assignment, we each turned to each other for help in our time of crisis. After the semester had ended, we all had a breath of relief. Now we can laugh about it as a funny memory as we take classes together now.
There are good days and bad days, but having college buddies to go through them with is a blessing.