Making Friends in College

Coming to college one thing I was certain I could handle was making friends. I am one of those people who has always been told I could make friends with a stop sign if I wanted to. However, It was not as easy as it seemed. I had friends from high school that I loved and trying to recreate that connection with a group of strangers took much more trial and error than I had anticipated. I wanted to share with you all how I made my first friends in college and what got me to eventually meet my best friends today.

When I first moved in I had the advantage of already meeting my two roommates. I created a Facebook account to join the Sacred Heart Class of 2023 Facebook Group. This is where I met my first friend and roommate at SHU. She had already had a friend who was attending SHU so when we found out we were triple-designated for rooming we decided all three of us would be roommates.

The three of us moved into a dorm the size of a shoe box across the street from main campus. This dorm building was the furthest of all the freshman dorms, which forced us to create friends in our building. We decided to leave our door open and try to socialize with the other students on our floor. A day or two after moving in, 3 girls came to our room and introduced themselves. They lived two stories above us and were looking to meet new people as well. If it weren't for leaving our door open we probably wouldn't have met as many people as we did.

Getting involved is also a great way to meet people, as you know from my previous blogs. In my sophomore year of college, I lived with all the women I met in my freshman dorm and it was a "shit show", for lack of a better term. It is not easy to live with 12 women, let alone go through a breakup and the Covid-19 pandemic. I was not in the best mental state and I ended up losing those friends during this time. If it weren't for my sorority I probably would have transferred schools. I owe a lot of my friendships and memories to my time in ADPi.

If you are at a small school and you aren't happy with your friend situation, don't shut yourself down. There are opportunities to make friends later on in your college years. Lots of students transfer both in and out of schools and some of my friends now actually transferred to SHU from other schools. I now have a group of friends that I couldn't live without.

I am so lucky to have found my friends over these years and, although I have had my troubles, I know I am graduating with friends I will have forever. For more college advice be sure to listen to the podcast and follow @itsirrellavent on Instagram.