How to Make Friends in College
By Amparo Sadovnik
ENG 1300
Making friends is not the easiest thing a person will do, especially in a different culture and with a different language. As friendly as I am, I didn’t think it will be hard, but when I started college, I found the answer to all my questions.
I just started college this semester and at first I thought that making friends was going to be hard. I began to think about how the other students would treat and if they were going to accept me. There were all kinds of foolish ideas going through my head; I couldn’t even sleep on the week before school started. I was just frustrated thinking that I didn’t know anyone and that all my new classmates were going to hate me. So I decided to be nice in order to get friends easily.
On the first day of school I decided to smile and say hello when necessary. I put my plan into use when I went to my first class and there was my first target on campus, who later became my best friend. I saw Diana and I started just by saying hello. Then we started to talk about our majors and ourselves. The interesting thing was, we were both from Columbia and as I saw that she was really friendly I thought that she could help me to make friends. By noon, I had met more than ten people just by smiling and saying hello. As effective as my plan was, I decided to continue with that project. With that, I made friends in all my classes, which eased some of my loneliness.
I went everywhere my friend Dayana went, and as nice as she was, she introduced me to all her friends. That was really good but those weren’t my friends, they were just Dayana’s friends and I didn’t realize it until I found out that they didn’t invite me to their reunions and activities.
I thought that I was making friends and maybe I would be popular in a few days, as I was in my previous school. I was determine to attract people’s attention; especially the guys, so I went on campus everyday looking my very best. I would dress and walk as best as I can; I went as far as buying new clothes and using makeup. It wasn’t long until my classmates started to notice the changes and some of them started to make fun of me. At that point I began to realize how foolish I was and how bad I was making things.
I stopped exaggerating about my looks because I felt too uncomfortable. I wasn’t feeling good about it; I missed too much time trying to figure out what to wear and how to impress others. That part of my plan wasn’t really that good, but my strategies were falling apart. When I started dressing different, my classmates looked at me as if I was crazy. Maybe they were right; I was just putting myself on the spot.
After a month, I had met many people, however they were so many of them, I couldn’t even remember their names, and many of them didn’t talk to me because of that. That was when I understood that I couldn’t have a million friends and keep all of them happy. Through that I made another friend, Geo, who didn’t remember my name either and as a result, we started to argue and he taught me that the best way to make friends was being yourself, as simple as that.
The next week, I started to be myself as I had learned. Things really did work out; I met real people with real lives. I didn’t make millions of friends; however, I got real friends. I learned that being nice is good but you don’t have to smile at every person that passes in front of you; besides it could be dangerous, and even worse, you could look stupid.