From kindergarten to senior year of high school, I've had the same best friends, which means I've never really had to make my own friends. We would do everything together, and it all started with our parents setting us up on play-dates when we were little. I'm from an insanely small town in Toledo, Ohio where everyone complains about how there's never anything to do, but with my five best friends, I was never bored.
I was so excited to get away from my small town and find a new adventure, with new people. Of course, I was sad that I wouldn't be able to take my friends with me, but I believed that was the beauty of this new chapter. We'd all go our separate ways and find new people, new interests, and thrive. My friends and I chose universities all over the country, with the farthest, my friend Mary, being all the way at the University of Central Florida. I personally chose Ohio University mainly because of the beautiful campus, and its reputation for being a home for everyone, no matter who you are.
With that being said, I didn't expect to have any issues in the friend's department.
As move-in day grew closer and closer, I was losing the sense of excitement in starting my new journey, and instead becoming overwhelmed with the fact that I would no longer have my best friends right by my side 24/7. Despite my anxiousness, every adult and college student I knew, and even my best friends reassured me that I would make so many new friends because of my personality and energy. I'm a very outgoing person, I love to make jokes and make people smile, but I'm also a very, very shy person if I'm meeting new people.
That brings us to my first few weeks of college. I've talked to so many people, introduced myself, said "hi" to people on my floor, but I still haven't really found any friends. As hard as it is for me as a relatively shy person, I've been doing a pretty good job of putting myself out there. As frustrating as it is, I want to think positively and think about the fact that one day (hopefully) I'll gain a solid group of friends, or even one friend, but no one really prepared me for how hard this actually would be. I think a large part of my problem is that I'm trying to find exact duplicates of my friends from home, and that just isn't a thing. I couldn't even begin to explain how awesome my friends are, but I'm sure everyone out there knows exactly what I mean.
Everyone around me sugarcoated the making new friends part of college, and I think it's important to let future college freshmen know that sometimes, for some people, like me, it's really not that easy. With that being said, I'm going to continue to put myself out there, even more so now, and not just believe that since it's the third week of college everyone already has their friends, because that's probably not the reality of it.
So, to the future college freshmen out there, be prepared of certain things, like making friends, transitioning into college life isn't going to be the way you imagined it would. But, I promise you, and I'm promising myself, that things will definitely get better and just because they really suck now, doesn't mean they'll suck forever.
