Switching to a new school is never easy, and I will learn how it will be when that new school is college. I will not pretend like I know exactly what you need to do in order to survive, but rather I will tell you what I did to survive.

So obviously as said in the aforementioned, I will be starting my college education very soon. For those of you wondering, I will be attending Syracuse University and yes there is a lot of snow, thank you. So although I cannot give advice on how to survive college, I can give advice on how to survive a new school. I’ve done it about 6 times so far. I’ll break it down into three steps.

1. Pick your friends wisely

Do not, I repeat do not make friends with the very first people you come into contact with. Imagine it is your first day of class and someone walks up to you introduces themselves and asks to sit next to you.

From my experience, these are one of two kinds of people. There is type one, who are the kids that usually are very friendly, but just won’t click with you. And type two are the mean girls type of people that you see in movies that befriend the new girl to only stab her in the back.

2. Try new things

Try as many new things as you can. Whether it be clubs or sports or outlandish classes, you can always drop them, but at least you said you tried it. Not only that, but you might find a new interest, or find something that peaks and existing interest of yours.

You’ll get to meet tons of new people who enjoy the same things you do and these will be the friends you make. Be open though, you won’t make friends when you don’t talk. I was introverted for a very long time and it was hard to make friends at my new schools so I decided to approach it differently and when I did, it was much easier to make friends.

Don’t try to make friends with the kids that are apart of that group. Rather make your own group and have that be the “cool kid” group. Just a thought.

3. Do your work

Do what you go to school to do… PARTYYYY!!! No, but seriously, do your work, please. Do not focus on the social aspect of school 24/7. Your friends will come at some point, but you do not want to screw up your GPA because you felt a little out of place or down. Staying focused is key and when you focus on school, it takes the pressure of the whole making friends thing, which actually, in turn, makes it that much easier.

You can be sure I used these this past semester at ‘Cuse.