Throughout my time at SCAD, I’ve found myself constantly saying the same statement over and over: “I have no friends”.
Here’s the thing, that’s a straight up lie… I’m not going to say making friends was easy, but it happened, and here I am today with the best friends that I could ever wish for. There are definitely obstacles to overcome at SCAD when it comes to making friends, and most of them have to do with how our campus life is set up. For example:
Most of the dorms are accessed through outdoor hallways. This changes how many people meet friends, especially freshman year. As I talked to my friends in college last year they were telling me about the people they met in their halls and on their floors. At SCAD, that’s a lot harder. Since we have outdoor access to our rooms, no one really hangs out in the halls.
The common rooms aren’t used as much as they could be. This also has to do with accessibility. At other schools there are common rooms that you walk through on your way to your room. At SCAD, our common rooms are off to the side, or in completely different buildings. I do love the common rooms in Montgomery House because they are right there when you walk in. The common room at Boundary Village has couches, comfy chairs, a big TV and a kitchen. I like to hangout in there sometimes, but I’ve never seen anyone else in there at the same time as me.
Our campus is spread out across the city. Of course we have the city of Savannah as our “campus,” but we don’t have the option to walk across the quad to see our friends. The school really does do their best to connect us to all aspects of campus, but sometimes I really don’t feel like making the ten-minute walk to the student center or library at midnight when I want to study. Don’t get me wrong, I do love feeling like I’m free to explore the city and knowing that if I’m lost, a SCAD building is probably right around the corner.
So, although our school has these flaws, I managed to make the best of it and find some friends. How?
I put myself out there. During the first week of school freshman year I asked a girl if I could sit with her at lunch. We became good friends! I found myself bonding with people over small things that we had in common, and expanding our friendship overtime. Friends don’t just come to you, you have to make an effort and be confident.
I took the lack of a campus to my advantage, and created my own campus. There are certain spots I love to be. These spots make up my own personal campus, and the people I ended up being friends with shared my love for these places. Once we became friends, we started adding to our campus as a group instead of as individuals.
I found out that networking and making friends go hand in hand. SCAD pushes networking so much, but who says it can only be for careers? I network to make friends, and now I have friends in almost every major on campus! Oh you’re majoring in fibers? I’m not, but I’m amazed by the work you can do. I want to be your friend and learn more about your work, and more about you. It’s important to make a friend in every major, because when your professor asks you to make a mood board for your advertising project and you have no clue what that means, you’ll have your fashion major BFF to help you out.
I realized how awesome our diverse student body is. Oh my gosh we have so many amazing people on campus. I’m blown away every day by the talent that people have, and all of the incredible ideas that they come up with. Not only are we diverse in our art and how we think, but also where we come from. Coming from the north to a southern city, it’s so fun to hear about all the traditions and things that go on down here that I never knew about. If you had told me ten years ago that my best friend in college was going to be a girl from Alabama with a thick southern accent, I probably would have laughed in your face. Southern girls were just something I saw on TV growing up; they don’t really exist do they? Uh, of course they do… Hello, Maine is not the only state in the US. It’s been an absolute blessing to meet so many different people from so many different places. I love learning about their traditions and their lives outside of Savannah. When we all come here we have common ground, and the coolest thing about SCAD is that you can come from a small town in Maine and find a best friend from Alabama, Jamaica, Wyoming, China, or anywhere in between.
During the past two years, I’ve learned to embrace our campus flaws and turn them into perks. SCAD not only makes you work hard in school, but also in making friends. You have to be social and make an effort to form bonds with people who really mean something to you. I’m never going to say “I have no friends” ever again, because I know in my heart that my life is full of so many great friends who all have wonderful qualities, incredible talent, and enough love to last a lifetime.