This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wash U chapter.
Our freshman floor was the greatest. I think it took us until sophomore year to realIze how much I appreciated them but there’s something so brilliant about being friends because of proximity. These are the people that see you when you’re panicking over webwork being due at 11 PM, the people who see you groggily walking to your freshman year mistake of a 9 AM class, the people who see you as you’re trying to find your place on campus. These people will start off as acquaintances, people you say hi to or smile at, but if you actually decide to sit down and talk to them, you can take a friend that’s a friend of proximity and turn them into genuine relationships. No, you don’t have to have the world in common with them, but you share a space and formative time in your college experience. That’s more than enough to form real friendships.
Our freshman floor was not close in the beginning of the year. Like any floor with more than 40 people, it’s just impossible to know everyone and people split off into friend groups. But our common room was active and we had awesome RAs (shoutout John and Cheryl). We were all friendly. But then towards the end of second semester freshman year (it can really happen at any time) we started to hang outside of Calc 3 study sessions. We’re all super different, and involved in very separate things on campus, but we genuinely have the best time together. From playing Borat drinking games, to going on restaurant excursions, to going on spring break together, we make up a family- as cheesy as that is.