We stood in the common lounge of our dorm, elbows brushing against each other as we huddled in a circle.
“Alright, we’ll begin with an icebreaker!” Our first year mentor beamed, clasping her hands together. My eyes roamed around, taking in all the new faces around me. Will we be friends?
It was only the first week of college, and I had already lost count of the number of times I said my name, where I was from and what I intended to major in. And, some conversations moved beyond small talk, too — I connected with one girl over our shared love for Japanese stationery and aesthetic note taking.
Yet, as the semester went on, all these initial promises of friendship began to fade. I’ve always heard that college is a chance to “find our people” and cultivate “lifelong friendships,” but I wasn’t sure how that happened.
Lesson #1: Knowing Our Values
Making friends doesn’t mean succumbing to peer pressure or compromising on our values. It means being with people who respect who we are, even if we don’t agree on everything.
Oftentimes, finding this group of people means learning to say “no.” Late-night parties feel overwhelming to me (and frankly I wouldn’t have the time to go if I had an exam coming up), so if someone asked me to go to one, I would politely decline. The people who respect that decision — and don’t try to pressure me into changing — are the people who are meant to be a friend.
Those who make me feel inferior for that decision are not worth spending time with (and I wouldn’t have known that if I said “yes!”).
Lesson #2: Calming the Nerves
It’s nerve wracking to go up and approach people, especially those that we haven’t met. Yet putting ourselves out there is key, and doing so can be subtle. During the first couple of weeks in college, the fire alarm went off during my multivariable calculus lecture. We all scurried out of the lecture hall, and for a moment, it felt as if I was in a high school fire drill again.
I found myself standing by myself on the grassy lawn outside the lecture hall, and a few feet away, I saw another girl standing by herself, as well. People crowded along with their friends around me, and I thought: This person could be a freshman, what if I go up and say hi? This thought pops up in my mind a lot, and most of the time, what holds me back from saying “hello,” is the fear of sounding awkward. However, I’ve come to ask myself: what’s the worst that can happen? Not much, in the grand scheme of things. At the worst, that person would shrug and walk away.
Anyways, I went up to this person and said “hello,” and we started talking. It turns out, we were both freshmen and also lived in the same dorm building. Long story short, we ended up becoming friends and studied multivariable calculus together throughout the semester.
Another thing that makes it easier to approach people is showing up to the same places consistently. I’ve been going to Brody Cafe and to the biomedical engineering building a lot to study. Often, I see the same faces there, and after time, that makes it easier to start a conversation.
Lesson #3: Moving Beyond Small Talk
We won’t move beyond “small talk” (ie, the basic, predictable conversation — where are you from, what are you majoring in, etc) with everyone, and that’s okay.
Of course, there’s not a scientific basis for this, but I don’t think we’re destined to “click” with everyone. A lot of people are nice, but they don’t always share our same energy, and in that case, we’re likely to just remain acquaintances. For the friends who I’ve had deeper, longer conversations with, there’s a certain “spark” or “chemistry” involved — something unexplainable that brings us together.
But for the people we do move past the small talk stage — how do we let that continue? Friendship takes effort from both sides; the universe won’t always spontaneously bring two people together. During spring finals week, I reconnected with a friend I met during my first semester of college — she reached out asking if I wanted to go for lunch. It was a refreshing conversation, and it felt good to catch up after such a long time. I feel that often, we’re held back from reaching out because, what if the other person is too busy? What if they don’t feel the same way? But, the reward definitely outweighs the risk — a new connection can form, or an old one can be rekindled.
Lesson #4: Quality Over Quantity
In college, I’ve met so many people, and had many conversations. It’s easy to have many acquaintances, but the more friends we have, the less we’re able to give to each person. That’s alright, but I believe that a few deep connections are more valuable than many surface level ones. If something’s wrong, or if we need to destress, I would want to go with someone who I feel close to. It takes time and repeated conversations to build this level of closeness and trust.
Lesson #5: As Fate Would Have It
Fate has a magical way of bringing people together. I met my closest friends unexpectedly — whether that was because we ran into each other at a school-organized social or ended up in the same dorm building. Yet, fate also has a way of having people drift away from each other — and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I never really saw the friends I made in orientation week afterward, since we embarked on different majors and didn’t share any classes together. However, we found groups of friends to spend our time with, and there’ll always be a connection between us when we meet again.
I don’t have this friendship thing all figured out. At the beginning of my freshman year of college, making friends felt… confusing. But now, the spontaneous dinner trips and long walks around campus filled with laughter and conversation has helped me realize that there are people out there that we can relate to. We just don’t know it yet.
Sareena Naganand is a sophomore from Piscataway, N.J. majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Her column, “The Daily Chai,“ is about finding happiness in simple, insignificant moments: the kind that makes us smile, wrapping around us like the warmth that comes from drinking a cup of tea.
