Making friends is something that college students are almost always worried about when they show up as first-years. It’s scary to leave home and come to a place where you know only a couple of people if you’re lucky (unless you’re from Westchester, Greenwich or Northern Jersey— then you know everyone). 

But for the rest of us, making friends during the first year is hard and intimidating. By sophomore year, this feeling begins to wear off, but meeting new people is something that a lot of students like to do, and why should they stop just because of the pandemic?

Here are some ideas I have for ways to make new friends. 

1. Respond to someone’s message in the Zoom group chat. “This really cute girl answered my class discussion question in the chat after I posted a graph of wind speed versus snow cover. She said my graph was ‘insightful!’ I think I might ask her to my date party,” Ryan Stat ’23 said. 
2. Ask people to study together or get coffee together, especially if you’re in a group project with them. “This guy asked me to get coffee but I can’t tell if he means as an actual outing, like a date, or if he just wants me to do the entire group project and thinks buying me coffee will cover it,” Izzy English ’22 said. 
3. Socially distanced quad sits! “I went to go do homework with my sorority sister, but we had to scream at each other from across the quad because we wanted to be extra safe and I couldn’t understand what she was saying,” Ella Econ ’21 said.
4. Go to the caf together. “I literally could not look at the food on my plate because it was so unappealing, and the whole dinner vibe was off because it did not remind me of dinner as much as it reminded me of mud. We were eating rice and beans,” William Chem ’24 said.
5. Just struggle like the rest of us. “I have been trying so hard to meet new people but I always end up just hanging out with my roommate. It’s like we’re in isolation anyways, even though we’re not. I hope this ends soon. I’d like to see someone that isn’t my roommate and zoom is the closest I can get,” Jack German ’22 said.