In life you will have friends who come and go throughout your life-time. These friends impact who you are and who you will become. However, in college many people find themselves struggling to find friends their first semester, or even their first year. This is totally normal and not many people get to college and immediately have an entire, lasting friend-group. You will find that almost everyone at college is looking for friends and even if you don’t think so, your best friend could be in line right next to you at the dining hall. Listed below are some ways that you can make friends regardless of if you live on campus or off campus!
Put yourself out there: By breaking out of your shell and sitting next to someone new, you will be opening doors for friendships. Many people are not comfortable outside of their normal, when you break outside of your everyday comfort you are able to grow and achieve your goals of making new friends.
Greek Life: When you join a sorority or fraternity you are enabling yourself to have life-long brothers/sisters. You will be able to connect to people and network with everyone in your sorority/fraternity. This is an awesome experience that definitely helps with making friends.
Clubs/Organizations: When you join a club or organization you find people that have similar hobbies or interests as you! This allows you to find friends that are more like you and help you to have a community on-campus. Here at ODU we have a vast variety of organizations that you can join to better enhance your experience here, and help you to make life-long friendships.
Residence halls: When you talk to the people that live in your building you are able to make some friends that live nearby. Go to your neighbor and ask them to get lunch together, or even study together in the common area. This helps you to break out of your shell and possibly make someone else’s day!!
Group chats: If you are a distance learner, you can find friends that live on campus by joining group chats of students in your classes, in your major, or even in clubs that you find interesting!
With all of this being said, an important key to friends in college, is that they are one of the biggest influences on your health, wellbeing, decision making, and even grades. If you have a friend that studies for most of the day, that will eventually rub off on you and you will be able to study with them for most of the day. Same thing applies to having a friend who has good time-management. This helps to really set yourself up for success in the future. Along with the good habits and traits your friends give you, they can also be negative traits and be a bad influence on you. Normally after the first couple of times meeting/texting a new potential friend you will be able to tell how they live their life and if they will be a good influence or not!
All in all, the friends that you make in life are so important to your growth and potential while in college. The right friends will cherish you and make you feel loved, during your growth in college. Just remember to break out of your shell, say hi to someone new, and enjoy every minute of it!
