Your dorm room is a perfectly sized haven to hide out. It has your favorite snacks, easy meals so you don’t have to go to the dining hall alone, and tranquility. It feels safe. But if you pass your college years in your comfort zone, you’re doing your future self a major disservice and forgetting the reasons why college is so great in the first place! I’ve seen many TikToks about college students being upset that Monsters University lied to them and college is lonely with nothing to do. That’s not the case at all! My philosophy is that for things to get better, you have to take risks.Â
Breaking out of your shell isn’t about going to every party and becoming a loud extrovert overnight. It’s about realizing that staying within the limits of your knowledge, what’s safe, what’s routine, is costing you lifelong friendships, career opportunities, and personal growth.Â
I recently saw a post on TikTok that said that you aren’t paying for your degree, you’re paying for the people that you’ll meet. Sure, staying in and studying means you have a higher GPA, but employers aren’t going to be impressed if you haven’t shown you are a person outside of that grade. The “hidden job market” is a real thing, many people get opportunities and higher paying jobs through networking and professional recommendations. If you hide in the back row of your classes, you won’t stand out as a person who is eager to learn and gather the information you are retaining for your career.
Professors aren’t just instructors, they are the gateway to becoming an assistant, getting research grants, and connecting with big names in your major. They can’t write you a letter of recommendation if they only know you from a score on a paper. Even asking one question after class or during office hours can show that you are engaging with the material and value what it is that the professor is teaching or at the very least, are making an effort to do well in the class.Â
Never again will you be surrounded by thousands of people your age who are all navigating and going through the same life experiences. Although we’re only a month in, I’ve talked with people with hundreds of different backgrounds and interests. If you stay in your shell or only talk to people that you knew from high school, you’re robbing yourself of the cultural and social diversity that is the college experience! I’m not asking you to get into conversations or surrounding yourself with people that make you uncomfortable, but college is meant to challenge your worldview and broaden your perspective! I’m personally using this time away from home to embrace the differences between my little country town and a bigger city with actual things to do. Ask a person you sit by in your math class if they want to go try the new Starbucks drink with you! Or simply ask if they are understanding the homework that you are struggling with!
I’ll use the example of my newfound friend. On the first day of classes, I asked her if I was in the right area for where my math class was. She said she hoped so because she had the same class. We ended up sitting together and that put us into the same math group. We got each other’s Instagram, and we have a lot of things in common! She sadly does not understand my love for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes era Coriolanus Snow, but I’ve learned to forgive her for that. The moral of my story is, all it takes is one question or a greeting and you can make good friends on campus.Â
I know how on a large campus that sees twenty-thousand students, it can be easy to feel like you’re alone and that everyone has found their group. That’s not true at all, either! While doing some research for this article, I discovered the term pluralistic ignorance. According to Reed College, pluralistic ignorance is defined as a social phenomenon where people privately reject a group norm or belief but publicly go along with it because they think everyone else agrees with said group norm or belief. An example of this is a student staying quiet during a hard lecture because they don’t see anyone else speaking up. The student assumes the others understand the material, even though they are confused as well. A more fitting example for my point is believing that you’re the only person with anxiety about making friends on campus while the majority of the other students on campus hold that same belief. The people who are leading organizations or hosting club meetings are likely just as anxious as you are about fitting in and being liked. Almost everyone in college is craving connection! Go up to people whose outfit you like and compliment it! When you take the initiative to say hello, you are not only taking stress off of the other person by greeting them first, but you are also conversing with a potential lifelong friend.
In high school, we were always told that the four years will go by quickly, and you never believe it until you’re at graduation. I can only assume that the four years of college will fly by, too. Looking back on graduation day and wistfully wondering “what if?” is, in my opinion, remarkably more upsetting and painful than facing a few seconds of awkward adrenaline today.Â