The first semester at Ashoka University had been one hell of a ride—living in a new place, dealing with homesickness, powering through countless readings, having good days, having bad days… and finding friends who would want to be there through it all.
Given how central friendship is to the experience of college, anticipations, and anxieties surrounding it are inevitable. Will I find friends? What if everyone finds their “groups” before I do, and I’m too late to join any? I say hi to so many people, but are they my friends? Some, if not all, of these questions, are familiar to the average student; they’ve plagued us before we came to Ashoka, after a couple of weeks here, and sometimes even today.
However, hindsight is also 20/20: many might want to tell their past selves about all the wonderful people who will come their way, be it in the form of groups, individual friendships or both. Here’s a look at the stories of ten first-year undergraduate students and the kinds of friendships they have found comfort in, here at Ashoka.
1. Kashika Gokhale
Kashika has found a group of friends in college—but not in O-week, as one might think. It was only after her first midterm break that she found the people who would become her friends scattered across her classes.
It turned out that they already had been a group before she befriended them, and she became part of it only some months into college. Although she has her group of friends, Kashika also enjoys mingling with people outside them.
2. Indira Bulhan
Indira, on the other hand, has one of two people she is very close to. Like, perhaps, many people, in the beginning of college she saw people around her forming groups and bonds and felt that she might not fit in. For a long time in college, however, she was in a wheelchair and found many people who helped her out, among whom she found her people. She sees in herself a change from high school—where she hung out with groups—to college—where she found individual friendships.
3. Deepraj Pandey
For Deepraj, friendships like his in Ashoka weren’t anything like the ones he had encountered before. Here, he found himself talking to everyone, hearing a range of stories he hadn’t before. He didn’t find making friends in the first week of college difficult because he had spoken to a lot of his batchmates through the Class of 2020 WhatsApp group. He is still friends with the people he met in O-Week, and has made many more over the course of his semester.
4. Ayush Shah
Ayush has found different groups of friends in college, although he does like individual friendships more, like the ones he found familiarity in, in high school. He didn’t find it very difficult to make friends, although he says that “to get close to one takes time”. His friendships here did not require too much effort of him—it generally started with a conversation where he found out that they clicked, and they proceeded to hang out more until they became friends.
5. Prakriti Singh
Prakriti doesn’t feel like she has or doesn’t have a group of friends. She hangs out with certain people more than with others, but that isn’t necessarily a marker of closeness. The process of making friends for her wasn’t particularly difficult—it involved the general apprehensions about new places and unfamiliar situations which settled with time. She found her good friends somewhere after September-October and would say her friendships here are stronger and deeper than those of hers in high school.
6. Ananya Rao
Ananya has a set of friends whom she is closest to but has good friends outside of them too. She generally ends up being closer to people when she hangs out with them alone but also loves being in groups. Her living with her friends in college did present a different dynamic from the friendships she had had before but did not impact closeness—her friends from high school are still her people.
7. Abdal
Abdal wasn’t nervous about making new friends because it isn’t something that is difficult for him, and because he had spoken to prospective students on Whatsapp before college started. He spends time with a lot of different people, but has a group with whom he hangs out more than with others; they are friends much closer than he had in high school. He considers himself a groups person, and has people over in his room quite often.
8. Aashlesh Pai
Aashlesh found various sets of friends through the activities he was involved in college like meditation, debating and Vistaar. Being from the same city or the same residence floor also helped create different groups. However, his closest friends are those who “haven’t, or haven’t necessarily, been a part of any activity” with him. The stark difference between his friendships in high school and those here is the diversity of cultures, opinions, and interests among his friends, which he hadn’t encountered before.
9. Hiteshi Ajmera
Hiteshi has a close-knit group of friends and many good friends outside this group on campus. She initially found it difficult to connect with people but eventually found her kind of people She feels that her friendships in high school were deeper than the ones she has in college. Something unique about friendships here, however, is that she can start where she left off with people here without having to fill them in developments in her life since they last spoke.
10. Srijan Sinha
“I am friends with a few groups, sort of like a recurring character in a TV series”
While he has a “main” group of people, Srijan can be seen hanging out with various other groups. While there are groups in the campus, he believes that there isn’t a division between them or much groupism. He had looked at college as an opportunity to be a new person and not particularly as an avenue for new friends groups, especially since he has a family-like group of friends from high school. One thing he enjoys about friendships here is that beyond the pleasure of company, he also gets to learn something from all the diverse people he has met.
These were just ten stories across one batch, out of the more than thousand students on campus. There must be so many more stories that you haven’t yet heard! People might have found friends, but in Ashoka, you can never really stop finding more. So if you haven’t found your people yet, or simply want more, know that there are so many people out there who eventually found theirs in so many different ways, and you will too!
Edited by Devashree Somani
Images curated by Amrita Tuli