We have it made at UR socially, at least. The people who complain about the social life at UR don’t get it and are missing out on what could be an incredible social experience. I’m a positive person in nature, but this sentiment is not out of range for the rest of the student body.
We have the opportunity to be connected to everyone around us on campus. At a school the size of UR, almost everyone has a familiar face. We see each other walking the same pathways to class every day, we go to the same club meetings, we take the same classes for our majors and we live in the same buildings.
Look at the people sitting around you at your favorite spot in the library you see them almost every day, don’t you? Why don’t you just say hello?
I love this about UR. The school is small enough that we are a tight-knit community, where you are connected to almost everyone on campus through one or two degrees and people know more about others than they probably should but it’s also large enough so that you can make new friends every week.
Over the course of the past few weeks, this understanding truly struck me. I came into this semester feeling a bit disappointed that I felt so settled into my activities and friends that it seemed that there was no one new to meet. I recognized a lot of faces from my past two years at UR, but by this point, if we weren’t friends already, I found it strange to suddenly try to meet them. In at least five situations, I realized that they felt exactly the same.
Breaking social barriers, in each situation, we took a step out of our comfort zones and admitted the truth we had the exact same friends, or we already knew each other’s names, or we had taken the exact same classes since first semester freshman year or we had seen each other perform in various events over the years. With that one admission, it was finally possible to simply take the next step and become more than just familiar strangers. Each stranger that becomes a new friend makes the breach of uncomfortable barriers worth it.
We see the same people everywhere we go on campus imagine if everyone just made a small effort to say hello or smile at a familiar face. You would be surprised at how many more people you would begin to call friends.
Our four years at UR go by really fast you don’t want to miss out on all of the opportunities to meet different people and experience new situations. Instead of complaining about frustrating friends or the lack of parties on campus, realize that the people around you on a constant basis are such promising friends to make.
When you see someone at a party, just point out the fact that you are both in the same class, and when you see that guy who lived down the hall from your freshman year in the tunnels, just smile and say, ‘Hey.”
He probably knows exactly who you are, and I bet he wants to say hello to you, too.
Friedlander is a member of the class of 2010.
