Coming into college, I was pretty nervous about making friends. Most of my high school friend group left Texas entirely, and scattered to Utah, New York, Colorado, or Tennessee. Fortunately for me, one of my best friends came to college with me, so I had someone to talk to from the beginning, but I was still worried. I didn’t want to spend four years with only one close friend.
So many people told me about meeting their best friends at their NSC or Fish Camp or at organization informationals, but I hadn’t. I looked around at people laughing with their groups of friends and wondered, “where are my friends? why don’t I have friends?” I had to keep reminding myself that I’d only been on campus for three days and there was no way I could have already found my best friends for the next four years.
School started, and suddenly, I was way too busy to even worry about having people to hang out with. All my time was spent going to class, studying, and sleeping. As I settled in and began to adjust to the pace of college, I realized that I did have friends that I made without even thinking about it.
There’s my DG from Fish Camp, sixteen people who were constantly supporting and loving each other. We update each other on our lives and share the crazy things that have happen to us.
There’s my roommate, Casey (shoutout to you, girl) because even though we didn’t know each other before college, we’ve lived in the same tiny room for the last seven weeks, and she knows me better than most.
There’s Alan and his roommates, who I lowkey bribed into being my friends by making them dinner.
Then there’s the Late Night Squad. Me and my best friend from high school, Meghan. I met Mae and Kayla at Fish Camp, and Jonathan and Travis at a Howdy Week event. It started as studying together in the MSC, and soon evolved into thrift shopping trips and midnight Whataburger runs. Now you can find us pretty much any night of the week outside Gates Ballroom, studying slash distracting each other with memes.
The first weeks of school taught me that friendship isn’t something you can force. It’s something that you have to let happen naturally and organically.
As bad as I want to be friends with the cute boy in my chemistry lab, or the cool girl in my government class, it doesn’t work if they don’t want it too. Stressing about making friends is useless, because you will find friends. It might take a little longer than you hoped, but waiting until you find the friendships you know will last for years to come is so worth it. If I can do it, so can you.