Student Blog: I Love College (Please Help Me Make Friends)

I love college. Everything about it is great. I moved in about three weeks ago, and it's been an absolute dream. Everything about it is my favorite thing. The freedom, the classes, the environment, everything.

I only have one problem, making friends.

Now yes, it has only been a couple of weeks, but making friends is a lot harder than what it seems. I just want to bump into someone and then boom life long friendship, but that has yet to happen. My main friend is my roommate, but unfortunately they share no classes with me. Now don't get me wrong, the people at my school are welcoming and kind, but they are all cool. Every single person seems so much cooler than me.

After a year of online school, I feel like I should be ready. I should be jumping at every opportunity to make friends, but my social anxiety along with a raging fear of rejection stops me in my tracks. I feel like I made more friends through Zoom than I have in real life. Seeing these people in real life is like seeing a micro-influencer in the streets. It is the weirdest experience of my life. I find myself as the kind of person who will not consider someone else their friend until the other person said it first.

I have had trouble making friends for as long as I could remember. My mother constantly tells me about how I would never play with kids at the park on the playground because I thought that they would say no. This fear has followed me around for what seems to be all of my life. Last year, I was nervous to go to college because I would need to actively make friends, and that is something I have not done in years. When it was announced that there were going to be no in-person classes for my first year, I was honestly a little bit relieved because the idea of making friends would not be in the forefront of that year. That year was about getting through school while working through a pandemic. Granted I guess I made friends, but then I begin to think to myself, do they think we are friends or are we more acquaintances?

I know for a fact that I am not the only one struggling with this. And for some reason that makes me feel ok. I just wish I could easily put myself out there, even now, and actively try to make some kind of connection with the people I walk by each day. I feel like people already have their groups, even though they are probably going to change in like a week or two. The way that mass media just makes it look so easy to make friends in college is so crazy, but then again these things were made in a pre- Covid world. We all have masks. We all need to keep our distance. We are all still on edge thinking about what will happen if a breakout occurs.