If there is one thing any college student or prospective college student needs to know is that we are all in this boat together. Once you move in on the first, always somehow wretchedly hot day in the dying embers of summer, it may feel like all the pressure is on. In reality, the opposite could not be more true. Take it from somebody who spent the first two years of his college life as a nobody.
The day I moved in, I knew I could not just sit around and do nothing. My roommate was my friend from home and unless I wanted to eventually know every single detail about his life that was way too complicated for me to care about that much, I needed to make friends. There is such a big stigma around the concept of friendship in college and I will be the first to admit, there are stages to the process.
Your first group of friends will most likely be your neighbors. The people you could not help but bump into when you were moving in because the moving bins were too wide to fit past each other in the halls. You will get lunch with them, stay up late and make ramen noodles when your roommate needs the room to themselves and in my hyper specific case, start a short-lived clothing brand. These friends will be ones you always remember as they were your firsts in the real world.
However, what comes next are what I call your adjacent friends. These are the friends your friends make and are introduced to you. These may be short-lived friendships or could very well end up being your best friend for the rest of your life. There is really a wide range with this group. In my personal experience, I would compare my adjacent friends as extras in the sitcom that is my life.
Finally, the next group of friends that you will meet will not be your friends at all. They will be annoying, they will yell at you, they will berate you with insults. Not out of hate, but love. These are the people that share the same ideals as you, the same passions, the same life goals and aspirations. These are the people who you will fall in love with and cry when they graduate. The ones you never want to be apart from. However nice this may sound, it takes time to get to this point. You cannot go to college and expect to meet these people right away. More often than not you will find them with two years or less left in your college career and you will scream at the stars questioning why you could not have met them sooner. However, you cannot spend too much time being angry; you have a party to go to.
These are the things that you have to understand when you go off to college. There will be trials and tribulations. There will be disgusting roommates and crazy teachers who will walk on your desks. But there will also be those who are ready to show you the next steps in life and there is no point wasting your time sulking in your room because you “do not fit in.” We are all in this boat together, so grab an oar and paddle.
