Meeting someone with the same vibe and mindset as you is one of the most incredible things about college.
As a young and elated freshman coming to a university filled with students from all over, I was thrilled to have a fresh start. I had just graduated from high school and left behind the only city I ever knew with friends I’ve known just as long. For the first couple of weeks after I settled in, it was painfully silent. It was the kind of silence that was deafening, almost like an unspoken tension. However it wasn’t the silence from my dorm that made me anxious. It was the silence of solitude that rendered a college campus bustling with thousands feel empty.
Do you know that feeling you get when you meet new people and an instant click pops in your head? It’s almost like an instant realization that the people you met were gonna be in your life for the long haul.
At first, making friends was hard. I’m in a whole other city away from my peers with people with many different views, it was hard to try. I even went out and attempted to make some friends, but there weren’t any people to click with. So when I met a group of like minded girls, the loneliness was burned away.
Soon our friendship grew, bonding over shared interests like Pedro Pascal, Percy Jackson and the common experience of being a freshman. After some intense volleyball matches and weekly lunches, they gave me pure joy to be around.
Being our rawest self around is the best way I could describe my friend group. Kylee was one of the first friends I ever met at college in FIG (First Year Interest Group). We got grouped together for a class activity and after class, we kept talking. She was also a journalism major so that was one of the things we had in common. I even found out that we both adored Star Wars. I remembered one time when class finished, our conversation took us all the way to the union building for some panda express. Kylee and I still close till this day.
Mikayla was the second friend I made. I remembered seeing her in FIG one day while I sat with Kylee. Mikayla seemed anxious as she sat in the back of the class. After class, me and Kylee always grabbed lunch, so this time, we invited Mikayla to join us. The moment she confessed her love for Pedro Pascal, I knew we were gonna be friends. She was so funny I laughed every time we were together. Conveniently, she asked if her roommate could join us as well. There, we met the fourth member of our group, Emma.
Emma was quiet at first. Soon, we found out that we had a lot in common. We both loved reading and continued to get to know each other. She lets me be myself and geek out over our favorite things like Percy Jackson. One of the things I love about her is how fiercely protective she is of her friends. I admired her a lot because of her confidence and attitude of not caring what others thought. At first, she was someone I found as a stranger, but now she’s a part of my heart.
One night, we decided to attend an event called Blinglow, which featured glow-in-the-dark bingo. We sat at this table when we noticed someone was sitting by themselves. Soon, four became five when we met Andrea. She was so sweet when we met. She also earned extra cool points for her skateboarding skills. From there we bonded over fits of rages from losing round after round. Yet at the end of the night we won something else. A new friend.
I genuinely think I came to college to meet these incredible individuals. At first it was challenging to make new friends, so when I found my people, I knew I had found that forever type of friend. It was the type of friendship where I uncontrollably laughed at everything. I see our friendships through glimpses of study sessions and sleepovers where we share everything with each other. I believe that no one understands you better than the people you meet in college. So go out and search for them. Take a chance on finding someone who means as much to you as my friends do to me. You never know, unless you try.