As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my favorite building on campus, watching a group of high-schoolers roam around East Carolina University. There are tons of them. Some wide-eyed and some visibly nervous, but they're all in the same boat.

As they come and go from the area where I sit, I can hear them asking other students "What advice would you give to incoming freshman?"

This got me thinking: What advice would I have needed to hear as a freshman?

My answer: it's okay to not have a huge friend group in college.

Here's why.

The idea of a "squad" is something that we see on a daily basis. It's all over the media; from news headlines on who's just been inducted and/or kicked out of a celebrity girl gang, or from the thousands of photos on Instagram captioned "#squadgoals."

We've also heard it from our parents, too. If yours are anything like mine, they have countless stories of adventures with their college squad. They jumped in cold mountain rivers, traveled to New York, and went to concerts... all with their big group of friends in college.

The idea of having a huge friend group is so heavily emphasized when, in reality, you don't need one to survive college.

Before I go any further, I'd like to say this: there's nothing wrong with having a huge friend group. If you have one, and you're happy, then that's great! Not all of us are built for that, though, and this article is for them.

When I came to college, I came with my boyfriend and best friend from high school. I was happy to have people from my hometown with me and I was eager to make more friends for us to hang out with. That's what college is about, right? Going on adventures with huge friend groups?

But I was shy, so I didn't talk to anyone in my classes. I didn't party, so I didn't meet any friends downtown on Thursdays. My roommate and I didn't hit it off. She had her own group of friends, so I had no luck there. By the end of my first semester, I had made one new friend: an exchange student, but she had to go back home to Germany at the beginning of the spring semester.

I felt so out of place for my first two years because I didn't have a big friend group when everyone else around me did. I had a squad in high school, and I had just assumed college would be the same way.

But it wasn't.

And that's perfectly okay.

Instead of juggling multiple relationships, I spent time taking care of the ones I had already established. My relationship with one of my lifelong friends became stronger, despite the fact that we were across the country from one another, and my relationship with my boyfriend and family flourished in a brand new way.

More importantly, though, my relationship with myself became the best it's ever been.

Instead of always wondering why I wasn't being accepted by my peers, I learned how to accept myself for being how I am. I started to learn what made me feel anxious, and how to combat it. I started to practice self-care in the form of giving myself time to practice my writing, and I started to keep a journal.

Over my four years in college, I have changed so much and found out so many things about myself, and one of the things I've realized is that I get stressed in large groups of people. I am physically and mentally not built to be in a "squad."

Am I missing out, though? Not at all.

This is not to say that having a big friend group means you're not going to find yourself: if that's how you flourish, then keep on doing it. I know, though, that there are a lot of people like me, who weren't born to be social creatures, worrying about the possibility of rejection and loneliness in college.

So, to you guys: it gets better. You'll have just as much fun, and you'll learn and grow, with or without a squad. Don't let society and "#squadgoals" pressure you into friendships that aren't worth it. You may feel like you're missing out at times, but what matters, in the end, is that you make the decisions that allow you to thrive during your college experience.