ORIGINALLY POSTED BY: HUGSTRONGER, August 8th, 2012
I had a thousand and one fears when I first started college, and almost none of them had to do with being able to handle the schoolwork. I’d spent 12 of my 18 years of life in school. School, I knew how to do.
Making friends, on the other hand. . . not so much.
Of those thousand and one fears, the greatest among them was my natural shyness. I worried that my preference to watch, rather than act would leave me a friendless loser with the worst college experience ever.
As the first days of college crept ever closer, I realized just how out of practice I was at the art of friend-making. All the friends I had from high school I had known since childhood.
The more I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last time I had to put myself out there and actually make a friend.
I managed to push these thoughts aside for a while, but in the last few days of summer came to an end, the fear that I would be friendless came back stronger than ever. My head kept filling with all the different ways I could embarrass myself and end up being that weird girl that no one wants to be friends with.
Needless to say, by the time move-in day rolled around, I had worked myself up into a pretty decent panic.
But you know what?
Everyone else, it turned out, had similar fears. We were all new to this college, and a lot of us where uncertain and more than a little scared
Once I realized that we were all in the same nervous, lonely boat, it was easy to crack a joke or two and make a few new friends.
The friends I made freshman year of college are some of the bestI’ve ever had, and it has everything to do with the fact that we were all scared and nervous and awkward together. We ate meals together, went to games and parties together, and were homesick together. Overcoming the hurdles of freshman year bonded us in a way that made us feel less like friends and more like family.
My first day of college was scary in a lot of ways: I was worried about getting lost, being late, and even worried that any second someone was going to say the university made a mistake, and I actually wasn’t supposed to be there.
But what helped me get through it was remembering that I not the only one who felt that way. I was not alone.
Those people seemed like a bunch of strangers to me, but we all had one very important thing in common: we were all scared and waiting for the one person who was brave enough to make it ok to be nervous.
My best friend and I met because he made a joke about needing a map and compass to navigate the campus, which made me laugh and made it easy for me to admit I was just as confused and more than a little bit lost. Together we managed to find what we were looking for and in the process, became friends.
Learning that these first few days were hard for everyone else, too, made it easy to break the ice.
Crack a joke about how you’re going to have to set five alarm clocks to wake up for your 8 am classes. Tell the story about how, this one time, you reached into your bag to get a pen for a friend or teacher to borrow and accidentally handed them a tampon instead, and how you hope you don’t embarrass yourself like that with a professor, or God forbid, the hot guy leading your orientation group.
You will make friends. Yes, it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable at first, but it’s that way for everyone else, too.
If there’s one thing I can guarantee about life, it is that you will not be a friendless loser with the worst college experience ever. When the end of the year finally rolled around, I was surprised to realize just how many friends I had made and how much I was going to miss them over the summer. If I can do it, so can you.
This post was originally posted at HugStronger.com, a resource for college students to share stories of hope, encouragement and recovery. Follow them on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates and insider content!