When People are People!

Upon entrance into the collegiate realm, this vast “melting pot” of students, we have ALL walked miles in the shoes of beginning freshmen. We’ve experienced the cultural “shock”, the diverse accents and vernacular, various “dress codes”, as well as the feeling of smallness compared to the seemingly giant upperclassmen on campus.
While many of us came to school with friends and acquaintances from our respective hometowns, there are those of us who came alone. And while many of the ones who came to college friendless have managed to wade through this sea of “bodies” and find other individuals that they can identify with and relate to, others remain by themselves.
The questions left to ask ourselves as members of this colony of developing “minds” are whether or not friends are apart of our success in college and do we really need them to be successful?
Personally, I remember starting college for the first time last semester after a seven-year hiatus from school.
I recall sitting in my freshman seminar class, a 24-year-old man, with students that were 17 and 18 years old. All of the people I came up with in high school and graduated with had since finished college and gone on to become successful citizens with their own families, and here I was , behind them. An “old head” in the midst of all this “youth.” I remember walking around campus and passing through the student union day after day feeling a sense of loneliness because I didn’t fit into any of the cliques on the “yard.” Briefly, I was in a state of depression.
But instead of wasting time and tears crying and sulking over the situation, I focused on the reason I came back to school in the first place. It wasn’t to fit in with the group or even make a lot of friends, but to better MYSELF and get an education.
If you as a student feel this same sense of urgency about your college experience, then it won’t even matter whether or not you gain any friends at all. As long as you get your mission accomplished and earn that degree, your purpose was fulfilled.
By the same token, we must remember that friends help to add balance to our lives. Even though there is a large age gap between myself and many of the other members of the student body, I still find solace in the fact that there are people here that I can relate to.
It’s comforting to me to know that people would rather be a friend to me and share things that we might have in common than to consider me to be some sort of “fossil” from “back in the day.”
After classes have adjourned, and the studying is complete, it’s vital to one’s existence to have someone that they can call on as a friend.
Whether you choose to “roll solo” or identify yourself within a group, remember that while in school there is a time and a place for everything.
DO remain focused on personal goals and academic upliftment.
But DON’T forget to take advantage of exposing yourself to the different people that make up the student body and making new friends.
Not only are friends “healthy”, but they are in fact, apart of success.