p.s. I had to sound somewhat professional in the narrative so that's not how I really talk. I use a lot more sarcasm :) Without further adieu, here's my narrative:
Making
Friends: An Unanticipated Hardship
I never thought
that I would have a difficult time making friends in college. I had looked on
several websites trying to prepare and they had all said that everyone is new
in college so everyone would be looking to make friends. Because of those
websites, I came into college with the notion that making friends would be
easy. I was horribly mistaken.
I had always
prided myself on being a nice, friendly person that people could easily
approach. However, I hadn’t realized that one of the reasons I was previously
so approachable was because everybody at my high school knew each other. I had
a large class at my high school, there were over 500 people in my grade and
over 2,000 in the school. However, I knew many of the upperclassmen as we had
been in the same schools since elementary school and preschool. I hadn’t
realized that I had become very comfortable with my long term friends and that
I was out of practice with making new friends. I didn’t remember how to
approach somebody I didn’t know or what level of sarcasm is appropriate for
somebody I didn’t know. I also learned, maybe I didn’t look as nice as I was.
When I arrived at
my first class, I sat down, hoping someone would sit next to me and we would
have a good conversation. However, I slowly noticed that everybody was choosing
to sit in every other seat. Nobody wanted to sit next to each other. It was as
if everybody wanted it to be known that they didn’t want to be bothered. As I
went through the next few days of class, I realized that this was the social
norm in most of my classes. Nobody wanted to talk, or they only wanted to talk
to people they had known in the previous semester. After this, I began to look
for friends in other places.
I began joining
clubs and attempted to join a club sport. However, everyone on the sports team
was already friends and therefore, they only kept people that had previously
been on the team. Some of the people in my clubs were just as antisocial as the
ones in my classes. However, it seemed as though I was on my way to making
friends in my clubs. But then the worst possible thing happened: I got sick.
Getting sick in
college is a horrible thing. People tend to avoid you like the plague if at all
possible. I know this because I would avoid people I saw coughing and I would
see others go out of their way to avoid them as well. I went back and forth
from my classes to my dorm and nowhere else, not even to eat. I was sick for about
a week and a half and missed 4 or 5 club meetings. When I came back, it was as
if nobody remembered me. I was long forgotten in favor of people who didn’t get
sick. I began to give up hope of ever making friends in college. I began to
wonder: Was I doing something wrong?
When I was younger
I had braces. Because of this, I didn’t smile much as the novelty of braces
wore off after the first year and a half. My mouth doesn’t turn up naturally so
sometimes it will appear as if I am frowning when, in fact, I’m probably just
thinking about school work or what was on television last night. I constantly
get asked, even now, if something is wrong. My answer is always no while my
head screams that it’s just my face. I began to realize, maybe I seem unapproachable like every other face in some of my classes. Maybe there were
people like me in my classes who felt the same as me and thought nobody wanted
anyone to sit next to them. So I began trying to force myself to smile in
class, or at least not frown and be hunched over my phone like everyone else.
But it wasn’t working. Was I ever going to have someone to talk to?
Towards the end of
the semester, something strange happened: Somebody sat next to me and started
talking. And it happened again and again and again. I don’t know if I began to
seem more approachable or if people just got tired of sitting alone, but
suddenly, I had people to talk to. I began to feel more comfortable in college
knowing that it was possible for me to make friends.
