A Word of Advice... on friendships

By Joshua O'Connell
Posted Monday, February 23, 2004

I don't really have any close friends on campus. That's not to say that I have no friends. Quite the opposite, in fact. I say "hey" and chat with several people throughout the day, all of whom are in different groups, to use the idea of a social structure. I'm friendly with the "popular" crowd and those who would be considered lower on the social ladder. But I'm nobody's really close friend, it seems. I'm never the person that's really asked to hang out a lot. (While in high schol I had some really good close friends by the end of senior year, for most of it, I was definitely similar to the way I am now.)

I wondered what it was about me. I mean, I know I can be annoying at times, perhaps more than other people. I tend to ramble, I tend to say things that can be seen as stupid, and generally, I get caught with my foot in my mouth a lot. I tried to work on that, because I figured it was a minor problem. I'm also really nice, sometimes to the point where I'm wondering if I am being a pushover. I rarely mind if they or any other people they bring over are really loud. I try to go out of my way to be helpful or cool, like helping them clean stuff up. If they ask me to use my room and my TV when they are having a girl over, or if a girlfriend is coming to visit and he wants the room to himself, I am extremely accomodating. I always offer whatever food or anything else that I have.

Take tonight, a little bit before I started writing this message, for instance. I wasn't asked to go out, even though there were some (minor) signs I wanted to. One of the guys even saw me walking back from the bathroom, and he was clearly dressed to go out, and only said, "What's up?"

So I hope it's now easy to see why I am so bummed. I mean, it's like I am always going to be an outsider or a 40th wheel. I'm tired of feeling like a loser. I know that some would say that it shouldn't make me so miserable, but it does. I also know that some say - rightly so - that I should try and make some new friends. I don't think that's as easy as some people say, particularly since it seems like groups have already been formed.

I'm just not exactly sure what to do. The year is flying by, and soon, I'll need to find a roommate or suitemate for next year. And I don't want to spend every weekend inside, or worse yet, sitting by myself. I'm really started to hate school because of this.

--Down in the Dumps

I'm going to take an immediate wild guess here, and assume you're a freshman. The reason for me doing this is based off the references to cliques and so forth that was in your question. The popular crowd, etc. is something that seems to slowly fade, sans a few exceptions (athletes, for one), as the years move through.

One thing I found is that as people move through college, it's the personal relationships that become more important, vs. the group ones. As a freshman, you're in a new place, know few people if any, and you tend to latch onto the first group of friends and stay as a collected herd. (The freshman phenomenon has been carefully documented in this column in the past.) What happens though is that as you make more friends, and get closer to some of them, the group herd fades. Sure, you still hang out sometimes, going to dinner or out to a party, but things just eventually evolve to the point where it's the people, not the clique, that matter.

Great example: this semester I've got this Wednesday tradition to hang out with this friend of mine at the local off-campus bar. However, up until this semester we rarely, if ever, hung out outside of the time we both mutually spent with our mutual friend (and in her case, roommate). We had actually met outside of this friendship initially, but it was that group setting that introduced us and now we've become friends in our own right, not friend-of-a-friend.

So, what happens if you're not in a group to begin with? Well, that was just my predicament, and I solved it a few ways. The first was to plan, in advance, a couple of outings with the roomie. Instead of waiting until that night, we sort of looked to the weekend, started figuring out what would be going on, and went out together. This ensures you have plans, but more importantly allows you to build that bond with the roomie that can't be done brooding while they're having some loud fun with their friends.

The second way was to get involved on campus. I still am involved in the college paper, which I joined freshman year. Some of my closer friends are either on the paper now or have passed through the paper at some point. You really can't knock an activity like that as a friendship builder, since you already have that mutual interest.

Most importantly, simply don't wait for people to invite you. Be proactive like I was with the roomie - I'm sure your roomies planned stuff hours or even days in advance. Plan an outing, invite some people that you wouldn't mind hanging out with, and see who bites. That'll get the ball rolling and give you a foundation to build a friendship off of it.

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